The New Opportunity: Connect With Your People

What you can do to retain your best employees and be more productive

To connect is human. But connection during the pandemic was limited, which inevitably caused a shift in the workplace, leading employees to change jobs at a record pace. The upside of this phenomenon is that leaders now have an opportunity to connect with their people in new ways. 

At the center of this connection are purpose, people, learning, and culture. A human-centered leadership style creates big benefits for companies because employees want to be at work and leaders themselves are happier. The faster we adapt and let our people lead the way, the better we will adjust to this new time of work.

Over the past couple of years, we have increasingly connected through a video screen or behind a mask. O.C. Tanner reports in its study, 2022 Connections, that 45% of employees say the number of individuals they regularly interact with at work has decreased significantly over the past year, and 57% say they engage in fewer social activities. In addition, 1 in 3 employees feels disconnected from their leader, furthering isolation and loneliness. Yet, when employees feel a strong connection to their teams and leaders, they are 30 times more likely to do great work, three times more likely to stay with the organization, and far less likely to burn out. 

Is this the reason that a great number of people have left the workplace and/or moved to new jobs? 
I got to watch this first-hand with my son-in-law who recently changed jobs. His thinking matched what many of the reports were saying: he was looking for a better work environment, a smaller and more collegial, a better home office location for his family, and greater advancement opportunities. His reasoning didn’t check all the boxes though, as he liked his original boss, and the pay was great. However, Gallup recently found that one in 10 employees say they have been recruited in the past three months, even though they were not actively looking for a new job or even watching for opportunities. That was his case. 

Dr. Anthony Klotz, who coined the term the “great resignation” said recently it will likely last a few more years. What is going on? Dr. Klotz thinks workers are contending with burnout after two years of higher-stress work and reframing their values—redefining what they find meaningful amid so much stress, illness, anxiety, and death. As companies roll out return-to-office plans, they must consider whether workers want to give up their autonomy. 

Gallup reports that 52% of voluntarily exiting employees say their manager or organization could have done something to prevent them from leaving their job. Workforce changes due to shortages, scarcity, flexibility, competition, and humanity (or lack of) are increasingly common. 

Humanity is leading the pack. Humanity is the good we do for and with our people and the world. How does your company’s purpose resonate with your people? I am not talking about products, performance reviews, celebrations, or compensation packages. About 75% of respondents to a PwC survey said they wanted to work for an organization that would make a positive contribution to society.

If leaders change focus to how they can make this shift an opportunity, they can redirect their concerns to growth. The opportunity for getting connected in new ways can be energizing. 

Get to know your people well enough to know their skills and style. Employees want their managers and organization to value them as whole people, not just workers. Discover what they are good at and make that part of their job, not necessarily adhering only to the org chart. This is an opportunity to rethink how people do their work and how that might be reflected in their titles. 

Think of the positive message you send with titles that match employees’ strengths. Leaders should also ask if they have the right people in the right places, especially managers. Your managers are a key part of your culture. And for hybrid environments, there are new leadership skills required. 

Development opportunities with clear career paths are more important than ever. Employers can think of them as perks. Now is the time to go beyond task orientation and position, and instead focus on employee expertise, aligning benefits with current employee priorities, and helping managers develop skills to lead and inspire. 

Ask employees what skills they want to build. In education circles, this is called differentiated learning, and it has been around for a long time. Align existing training to the human aspects of work. Include things like empathy, difficult conversations, and team versus individual success. 
Create career paths and make them explicit throughout the year, not just at annual review time. Build new recognition and development structures aligned with compensation, advancement and perks. If someone is doing well and you give them more work, think about the message. Some companies are finding ways to reward people by promoting them into new roles and into additional levels within their existing ones. It is common in higher education for people who teach students to have titles such as teaching assistant, adjunct, assistant, and professor. 

Everyone knows purpose is important. See if employees know the company’s purpose. Walk around and ask them to define their understanding of the purpose and the company values. Another way to see this in practice is the degree that your work environment is transactional. If your response to attrition or movement is to raise compensation, that tells your people your relationship with them is transactional. Their reason to stay is a paycheck. Think about solving this by considering the whole person (not just their bank accounts) in alignment with the whole organization.

How are you examining and supporting your leaders and managers? Leaders who don’t make their people feel valued often drive them from companies, with or without a new job in hand. Help your leaders to motivate and inspire their teams and lead with compassion. Help them with a coaching, servant leadership or connected leadership style of leading.

Does your company have a positive culture? Most companies would answer that they do. This stands in stark contrast to why people switch jobs. You may see it playing out right now with employees told to return to the office because it will help them connect. If the culture wasn’t great before, why would it be now? 

And remember the needs of your employees have changed. Has your culture kept up? If there were any prior organizational weaknesses, they would be magnified. The tolerance for a return to what it was like before is low. 

A PEW Research survey reported that 45 percent of people who had left their jobs, cited the need to take care of the family as an influential factor in their decision (childcare, nursing services, or other home- and family-focused supports). Providing support for needs such as this are vivid examples of valuing employees, and it pays off in retaining high-quality employees. Patagonia has for years had progressive workplace policies. They retain nearly 100 percent of their new moms with on-site childcare and other benefits for parents. 

This human-centered leadership approach can create big benefits for companies because employees want to be at work. It also benefits leaders too. Research by Potential Project, from 15,000 leaders and 150,000 employees, found that leaders who rate themselves high on compassion have 66% lower stress than their less compassionate counterparts, a 200% lower intention to quit, and 14% higher efficacy. 

For many leaders, this will be a big shift in leadership style. The faster leaders can adapt to the new needs of employees, the more success they’ll have with their teams.