Recruiting And Retaining Employees

How to nurture professional behavior while avoiding employee entitlement

According to Gallup’s recent State of the American Workplace Report, “only one-third of U.S. employees are engaged in their work and workplace. And only about one in five say their performance is managed in a way that motivates them to do outstanding work.”

 

The cost of not driving employee engagement is high. The Society for Human Resource Management says employers will need to spend the equivalent of six to nine months of an employee’s salary to find and train their replacement. That means for an employee salaried at $60,000, it will cost the company anywhere from $30,000 to $45,000 to hire and train a replacement. That also means it’s in the best interest of your company – at least financially – to nurture the professional behavior of your employees to keep them engaged, while not fostering a sense of entitlement.
 
I run an organization of 230 call center employees, many of whom are young and on their first or second corporate job. Here are some of my tips to keep your employees engaged.
 
Coach for growth. We focus much of our efforts on hiring the right employee. Once we have hired the right employee, we take a long-term view of their potential, which means we coach for their growth. Our managers regularly sit down with each of their direct reports to provide both positive and negative feedback. As we’ve experienced, providing this feedback consistently is much more effective and less anxiety-inducing than giving them feedback in a formal review setting.
 
Part of the feedback they receive is noticing any extra steps they’ve taken for the success of the company. For example, one time, right before I was leaving on a long vacation and was already stressed, my boss asked me to complete a quick project she needed. While it added to my stress, and I had to stay later than I had planned, I completed the project that night. During my vacation, my boss sent me a note, thanking me for spending the necessary time at the last minute to meet her deadline. This might have seemed like a small gesture to my boss, but the note meant a lot to me.
 
Be honest with your employees. If you are not honest with your people, neither you nor your employees will get what you want out of the job. Provide them with real, concrete feedback with specific examples of what they did well and how they can improve. They’ll know you are on their side, and that it’s in your mutual interests to have them succeed.
 
Tap into their aspirations. Find out what each employee wants to accomplish and how they see themselves in the future. Don’t be afraid if they have high ambitions. Encourage those ambitions to help them improve.
 
Hold your employees accountable. In managing Operations for EnerBank, I have two key rules that I expect our employees to follow: show up on time and be reliable. These actions seem simple, but those who follow these two behaviors are likely to be successful employees. It might be hard to believe, but it’s true.
 
Remember that great relationships evolve. It takes time for employees to feel comfortable in their jobs, and it also takes time for you to learn how to manage them. Everyone is different. Allow for disagreement. You want someone who will challenge your decisions and thinking from time to time. That’s ok.
 
So, how do you manage a situation that isn’t working out?
 
You may feel like you’re following all the steps for successful coaching, but the employee continues to struggle. My rule is that a bad review should never be a surprise—to you or the employee. When an employee does something that is not up to company standards of service, provide quick, swift feedback. Timely feedback is most impactful. Base it on something measurable, such as attendance, timeliness or project delivery.
 
That said, remember we all have strengths and weaknesses. Recognize and focus on your employees’ greatest strengths but don’t blame them for their weaknesses. To help with an appraisal of these strengths and weaknesses, we perform an assessment during the hiring process. We also rate the various job functions at our company based on needed strengths and weaknesses that would prevent the employee from being successful, and what type of communication styles we need for the job to function properly.     
 
If the employee isn’t working out, despite your coaching, it could be because the employee is in the wrong position. A few years ago, a department was struggling to maintain their service levels. We brainstormed solutions with our management team and started implementing changes. No matter what changes we made, nothing fixed the problem. Eventually, one of my managers figured out that we were expecting the employees to complete two different jobs requiring two different skill sets.
 
One part of the job was interfacing with the customer to help resolve their concerns. The other part of the job was more technical, requiring employees to conduct research and maintenance accounts. Most employees were good at one part of the job, but not the other. To fix the issue, we decided to split the functions. Those who were good at interfacing with customers were on the phones and handled responses. Those with more technical skills conducted the research. This solution took more time and cost more money to implement, but we eventually saw a significant increase in production and service levels because of it.  Ultimately, it saved us money because the turnover rate was reduced and employee engagement increased.
 
Investing upfront in coaching and managing our employees ultimately saves a fortune on the back end. While we aren’t perfect, we do succeed more often than not in achieving happier, more engaged employees, which results in a more successful company culture.