7 Habits for Higher Employee Retention in 2023
On a scale of “exhausted & depleted” to “refreshed & energised”, how are you and your team coming into the new year?
Over the winter break I spent some time in the bush helping my family clean up fallen trees and split firewood—feeding our large bonfire cleaned up the brush. On day two of the firewood round-up we came back to some smouldering logs and embers. Without intention it could be easily snuffed out, but with a few dry pieces of dry birch bark, twigs and gentle coaxing it was burning again in no time.
If you were to take a birds eye view of your workplace culture, would you see a healthy burning fire, or a few smouldering embers?
We’ve all seen what happens when the fire is snuffed out. The great resignation, quiet quitting, employee burnout and talent shortages. In a post-industrial era we need to humanize our workplaces, or people simply won’t stay. In the words of Kathleen Hogan, Chief People Officer at Microsoft, “Now more than ever, positive business outcomes depend on positive people outcomes.”
Hope is not lost for the workplace with smouldering embers. These 7 habits for higher employee retention will help you ignite passion, commitment and results.
1. Do “employee listening” extremely well
A recent study by Howspace found that 90% of employees feel their voice is not heard. When I was leading a frontline team, I would ask people what they needed from their leaders. I was surprised by the simplicity of what I heard over and over again, “I want to be asked for my input and to feel like I’ve been heard. I don’t expect it to always go the way I think it should, but I want to know my input has mattered.” Underlying these statements was a need for their experience and insights to be valued.
It’s easy to get wrapped up in the overwhelming “to-dos”, but when your mind is in a million places people can tell you’re not really with them. Deep listening is a practiced skill. It means you take the time to fully set aside your own thoughts to be fully present, hear and show that you understand.
You can have higher employee retention if you build the habit of actively listening, showing that you understand and checking if you’ve heard correctly.
2. Have honest conversations about the challenges
It’s tempting to think of a healthy workplace as somewhere everyone is happy and positive. You might want to keep communication optimistic in the effort to build that positive culture—but people can feel the undercurrents of what’s going on. If things aren’t good and you pretend like they are, it can be toxic.
The Harvard Business Review found that 75% of employees want to experience more authenticity at work and only 18% of employees trust their leaders to be honest. Authentic leadership is crucial in cultivating a healthy culture. The more we can articulate the challenges and barriers we face, the greater our ability to co-create solutions that address them.
You can have higher employee retention if you build the habit of having honest conversations about the challenges, transparency about the barriers or limitations and invite the team to help look for solutions.
3. Use data to set priorities and inform decisions
You know the saying, “the squeaky wheel gets the grease?” In the absence of good data to set priorities and support decisions, leaders will spend a lot of their time responding to the loudest 2% of team members. It does a disservice to everyone. Without data your own biases and fears can easily lead you off course from what’s most productive and helpful to the team. This is especially true in our newer work environment as we try to sort out the best ways to do hybrid and decide when in-person gathering is needed.
Consider your existing channels and where new approaches are needed for hearing feedback from employees. A platform like MESH/diversity helps to understand your baseline and then consistently collect data to measure your success in creating the lasting culture change you want to see.
You can have higher employee retention if you build the habit of really knowing what’s going on, rather than taking your best guess or using an anecdotal understanding.
4. Initiate cross-team collaboration
A challenge most teams will express at one point or another is the desire to break down silos that are causing isolation and disconnect from the bigger picture of the work. Multiple sub-cultures start to evolve within the organization and teams can start to resent one another.
You can identify and solve major business problems by changing the way work is done. Team members with the least experience in a particular area can offer great insights because they’ll think differently about the problem. When you change the norms of collaboration, you inevitably also impact the culture while doing the work in more productive ways. Strata Research shares their success story in this client testimonial.
You can have higher employee retention if you build the habit of inviting diverse groups of people to work together on solving tough problems—leveraging the knowledge and experience of the collective.
5. Share responsibility and accountability
Gallup’s Report on the State of the Global Workplace in 2022 found that 60% of people are emotionally detached at work to “get by”. This is completely at odds with the finding that 81% of employees want to be contributing to a bigger impact. People want to be invested, but in the absence of a clear connection to the impact of their work, they’re detached—maybe even caught in a spiral of “blame and complain”.
Employees are re-thinking their purpose and searching for meaning, not busy work. This is an exciting opportunity for leaders to invite shared accountability for both outcomes and how it feels to be part of the team. Create opportunities for people to self-select into special projects that are meaningful and aligned to their strengths.
You can have higher employee retention if you build the habit of inviting the team to define success and share the responsibility of how to get there together.
6. Trust your people as experts in what they do
Many workplaces are suffering from an industrial-era hangover. Hundreds of years later a command-and-control culture is keeping some stuck and actively preventing the types of behaviours needed to succeed today. For example, minimal employee autonomy keeps leaders in ‘control’ of what’s going on, but at a detriment to commitment and creative input. If we peel back the layers of this hierarchical onion we find a whole lot of oppression—the very opposite of an environment of trust.
Pandemic disruption has changed the way we think about work—with it the balance of power has shifted from employers to employees. Hierarchical cultures that fail to humanize the workplace will struggle to retain. Building a trusting environment demands diversity, equity, inclusion, and wellbeing as part of the core business strategy. Employees want to know that they matter, their experience matters, leaders trust them and they can trust their leaders.
You can have higher employee retention if you build the habit of trusting people and the expertise they bring—give space and autonomy and you’ll get better results.
7. Be intentional about how you show up
Early in my career, I set out on a mission to find out how I could create culture change. One of the first books I read stopped me in my tracks—I wanted to change culture, but I realized the only thing I had power to change was me. It is possible for one person to influence culture change in a dramatic way, but it only works if you’re focused on the right thing—yourself. When you try to change others and it simply doesn’t work.
Instead, focus on how you show up each day. Get clear on the outcomes you’re hoping for and then ask yourself: How do I want people to experience me? What impact do I want to have? What mindset will help me achieve my intended impact? What mindset will be a barrier? What do I need to change or what actions can I take personally? When you align the way you show up with the outcomes you want to achieve your impact will be contagious.
You can have higher employee retention if you build the habit of starting with how you can change, not how you can change other people.
Employees are the foundation of your organization and building a workplace culture that values the contributions of each person is your best competitive advantage. Ignite passion, commitment and results by building habits that create a workplace environment where people want to be. A little care and attention will go a long way in turning those smouldering embers into a healthy fire again.
If you’d like to learn more about how I help to build effective teams and workplaces, I’d love to start with a conversation: https://www.optimalaffect.ca/contact
