Operational Retaining Good Employees Interview Preparation Guide

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Employee retention refers to the ability of an organization to retain its employees. Employee retention can be represented by a simple statistic (for example, a retention rate of 80% usually indicates that an organization kept 80% of its employees in a given period). However, many consider employee retention as relating to the efforts by which employers attempt to retain employees in their workforce. In this sense, retention becomes the strategies rather than the outcome.

Employee turnover is a symptom of deeper issues that have not been resolved, which may include low employee morale, absence of a clear career path, lack of recognition, poor employee-manager relationships or many other issues. A lack of satisfaction and commitment to the organization can also cause an employee to withdraw and begin looking for other opportunities. Pay does not always play as large a role in inducing turnover as is typically believed.

Here are a few steps for retaining good employees:
★ Communicate
★ Coach
★ Establish clear performance metrics and make employees accountable for delivering
★ Leverage performance reviews to gain insights into employee' goals and aspirations
★ Create growth opportunities
★ Underscore positive feedback with something tangible

You have to find a growth path for the great ones. The great ones will join your company to grow, to learn, to do new things. If they can not grow, they die a little every day. It is your job to understand the career path for all your key employees. And do whatever you can, within the boundaries of reality, to help them achieve it.

You need to meet one on one, in an unstructured way, with all your best people at least once a quarter. Quietly and ask them what is frustrating them about their job. What they want to be doing but are not getting to do. Be friendly but blunt. You need to learn. Get it out of them.
You may think if you have drinks together or socialize together that you will know if they are happy. But you will not. Even if people complain in those contexts, it will be general complaints. You will not learn or know, what your top people need to find their growth path at your company. Where they feel stalled out and frustrated. You have to ask.

The funny thing about communication is that it is as much about the words you say, as it is about the tone of your voice combined with eye contact, hand gestures, body positioning and even touch.
A large percentage of the meaning we derive from communication is derived from the non-verbal cues the other person gives. So, if you only meet virtually with your team, much of your message and their response to it may be lost. Face time, however scarce, is an immensely important factor in communicating well and establishing trust. If you are managing employees in remote locations, try to meet with them in person on a regular basis maybe not monthly but at least 2 to 3 times per year.

Now by the time they take another job, it is too late. Even if a raise would work then, which it will not, the relationship is damaged at that point anyway.
But it is not necessarily too late when they start to interview. It may be, in its own way, a plea of exasperation as much as anything else. If you can fix whatever is at issue, you can usually keep him or her.

This seasoned engineer should not have had a five-figure salary, even if it made sense in a historical context. Pay market or above, as soon as you can. It is a sign of respect. And most of the best ones will not ask. They will just eventually get frustrated and leave.

You have to get compensation right, as best you can, all the time. These days, anyone good is going to get a raise to move and maybe a signing bonus on top of that.
The thing is you can not counter. It is too late by that point. Once they tell you they have another offer they are already out the door. A raise will not do it at this point, at least not for the good ones.

If they choose to stay, however, they must commit to being effective, contributing employees. If the manager cannot make this leap, you will need to let the manager go before their negativity impacts the rest of your workplace.

If a manager fails at employee retention, the chances are good that the manager has been unable or unwilling to develop their ability to manage and value people across the board. Managers who exhibit a pattern in which their key employees leave your organization cannot retain their management role.If you have fairly and ethically provided the manager the learning opportunities suggested here, you can, in good conscience, remove the individual from the managerial role. My experience has been that most managers consider this such a loss of prestige and face that they voluntarily leave the organization.

These ideas will help your organization develop managers who believe in and act in ways that support employee retention.
★ Integrate core values about people and a mission and vision that enable people to align themselves with the company direction. Communicate the importance of these and clear expectations about the behaviors expected from managers to accomplish these, to every manager.
★ Negotiate a performance development plan with each manager that stresses the expected managerial areas of development.
★ Provide training in core management skills to every manager. Core management skills include how to:
★ Integrate performance management including goal setting.
★ Give and receive feedback.
★ Recognize and value employees.
★ Coach employee performance.
★ Handle employee complaints and problems.
★ Provide a motivating work environment.
★ Hold career development discussions with employees.
★ Hold regular meetings to provide management development coaching and feedback. You can assist managers to improve their management style and skills. A regular meeting helps you debrief events as they occur, while memories of the exchanges are fresh in the manager's mind.
★ Schedule and hold learning organization events such as book clubs, product training, project debriefs and discussion and planning meetings.
★ Provide funding for conferences and educational development opportunities for managers to continue learning.

Almost every manager can increase his/her ability to retain employees by developing his/her management skills. Teaching a manager about how to value people can be more challenging. Particularly if the manager does not already value people and their contributions in his/her mind and heart, it will be a leap for his/her to change his/her values.

Employee complaints about managers and supervisors center on these areas. Employees leave managers who fail to:
★ provide clarity about expectations.
★ provide clarity about career development and earning potential.
★ give regular feedback about performance.
★ hold scheduled meetings.
★ provide a framework within which the employee perceives he can succeed.

Managers who retain staff start by communicating clear expectations to the employee. They share their picture of what constitutes success for the employee in both the expected deliverables from and the performance of their job. These managers provide frequent feedback and make the employee feel valued. When an employee completes an exchange with a manager who retains staff, he or she feels empowered, enabled and confident in their ability to get the job done.

The quality of the supervision an employee receives is critical to employee retention. People leave managers and supervisors more often than they leave companies or jobs. It is not enough that the manager is well-liked or a nice person. Sure, a nice, likeable manager earns you some points with your employees. A draconian, nasty or controlling manager takes points away from your organization. So will below market benefits and compensation but a manager or supervisor, who is a professional at employee retention, knows that the quality of the supervision is the key factor in employee retention.

Beyond salary/bonus/equity, think about "rewarding" employees for truly superior performance, how about dinner on the company as a spot award? or recognizing employee's start-date anniversaries? or closing the office early before a holiday to allow the team to get a jump on the holiday? or awarding a personal day after completion of a 'hairy-scary' assignment?. At the end of the day words are just words. While feedback is important, people also need to feel appreciated in a tangible way. The return in terms of employee loyalty and commitment will far outweigh the financial cost of these "spot" awards over the long run.

When hiring, look inside first. Make it a priority to scan the internal environment first to see if there are existing employees who could stretch into the new position…growing to the next level. Make sure employees are aware of internal openings and have a chance to apply for them if they are interested.

As your company grows and matures and more infrastructure is formalized, performance reviews can be opportunities to discuss employee's career goals and obtain input for creating stretch opportunities for them both within their current roles and in new roles.

Establish well defined metrics for evaluating an employee's contribution to achieving business goals. Expect and demand good work. Review performance versus those metrics on a regular basis. Acknowledge good work when it is delivered. Discuss work that missed the mark and jointly determine how to avoid a repeat performance in the next round.

Try to balance giving your team members the authority, the tools and the space they need to do their jobs empowering them and staying checked-in as they execute their responsibilities. Be accessible for and open to, problem solving whether it is brainstorming next steps or fighting fires. And, be accessible personally taking a genuine interest in employees as individuals, as people.

You have to get compensation right, as best you can, all the time. These days, anyone good is going to get a raise to move and may be a signing bonus on top of that.
The thing is--you can't counter. It's too late by that point. Once they tell you they have another offer they're already out the door. A raise won't do it at this point, at least not for the good ones.

You have to find a growth path for the great ones. The great ones will join your company to grow, to learn, to do new things. If they can't grow, they die a little every day. It's your job to understand the career path for all your key employees. And do whatever you can, within the boundaries of reality, to help them achieve it.

One night I was at an event with a number of other CEO founders. One CEO told me the story of how he lost a top up-and-coming engineer, who was making a five-figure salary, to a real boring company that doubled her salary. That boring company had to. How else can a boring company steal a star engineer from a hot startup? The answer is: lots of money.
My point here is this seasoned engineer should not have had a five-figure salary, even if it made sense in a historical context (she had joined as a very junior person, consistent with prior salary). Pay market, or above, as soon as you can. It's a sign of respect. And most of the best ones won't ask. They'll just eventually get frustrated and leave.

Determining the underlying causes for an employee's departure is vital to the success and evolution of every company, large or small. The exit interview is the most underrated yet efficient method in gathering this information, and it needs to be continued time and time again to build statistical information on an organization. Each organization is different than the one across the parking lot. Therefore, the more information gathered, the more informed senior management will be about strategic decisions down the road.