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Why should you motivate employees to join and stay with your organization? First, it is good business. Companies that strive to attract and retain skilled personnel show consistently higher bottom-line profitability, increased value to customers, and stronger sustainability, especially in challenging times.
Second, recruitment of excellent staff is the single most significant factor affecting a company's fiscal growth; a recent study links it to a 10-percent increase, and ranks it ahead of such factors as accountability, a collegial workplace, effective communications, and prudent use of resources.
Third, employee retention saves you money. Current estimates suggest that losing an average employee can cost a company at least 150 percent of his or her salary. Most of these projections do not even begin to consider hidden costs, such as lost knowledge and arrested return on training investments, the counter-productive effects of mourning and insecurity among remaining coworkers, and an expensive replacement search.
Fourth, in the near future, good employees will become even harder to find and keep. The up-and-coming workforce comprised of Generation X—people born between 1965 and 1981—will number only about 58 percent of the presently available work pool that includes Baby Boomers—people born between 1946 and 1964. As the Boomers retire, fewer people will be available to work, so firms will need more support for their recruitment efforts to compensate.
Fortunately, there is a great deal you can do to ensure that your company is well staffed—now and into the future. The key is to position your company as an employer people want to work for. Here are a few practical tips on how:
Look Inside
Take an introspective look at your organization's integrity and fairness, and correct inequities. As an employer, are you fair? Do you operate with integrity? Do you offer a forum for open dialogue? Is there pride in the workplace? Do you provide opportunity for self-satisfaction and professional growth?
The perception of fair treatment is critical to attracting and retaining good people. Sadly, only 39 percent of North-American workers trust their company's senior leaders. On the other hand, the businesses whose staff trust top management show 42 percent higher shareholder returns than businesses whose workers lack confidence in their leadership.
Find a Good Fit
Know your company's culture and communicate it openly to prospective employees. Research indicates that employees' fit with corporate culture is 80 percent responsible for determining their degree of motivation and emotional commitment to the job. Mismatches stress and drain them by consuming high levels of adaptive energy, since misfits are continuously forced to adjust themselves to the work environment against the grain. Conversely, a good match jump-starts productive interaction and effective communication between the employee and the company.
Before hiring any likely prospects you confirm during job interviews, first give them a plant tour, or create a forum for them to interact with your key staff members. Heed what their responses tell you about their future fit with your organization. It also helps to work with outside staffing specialists, who can give job candidates an unbiased overview of your company's corporate culture, and assess their suitability as matches before introducing them to you.
Communicate with Your Staff
Recent studies show only 52 percent of employees feel they know how their jobs promote company objectives. Yet today's employees require more information than ever before to help them cope with multiple uncertainties: the wavering economy, downsizings, and the faster pace of change in businesses, marketplaces, and customer demands.
Generally, staff like to know what their management is doing to stay current in their marketplace, and what they can do, specifically, to help make a difference. By communicating your firm's goals and strategies to them, you not only keep them engaged but also give them the information they need to tailor their daily actions to support your initiatives.
Creating explicit job descriptions and conducting consistent one-on-one performance reviews are important aspects of communicating effectively. Informal channels are equally essential. Management, by walking around, provides mutual communication opportunities and insight, as well as having a huge positive impact on how your people feel about their jobs and their leaders.
Accessibility and communication were critical to former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani's leadership after 9/11. Basing himself at Ground Zero, he co-ordinated responses from numerous city departments, relayed their needs to state and federal authorities, encouraged emergency personnel, consoled the injured and bereaved, and made frequent media appearances to give the public critical information on what had occurred and what was being done. His constant visibility and reporting inspired universal confidence that the crisis was under control. So central was communication to his achievement, that a 9/11 exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum of American History houses Mr. Giuliani's two-way walkie-talkie telephone—a device he was rarely without on the days following the attacks.
Open Up
Give staff a forum for open dialogue. Employees are the ones who see your operation from a day-to-day perspective. They are stakeholders in your business. Value that. Encourage and empower them to contribute ideas for improving your operations, using well-thought-out reasons to substantiate their points of view. In exchange, provide them with meaningful feedback, including an explanation of how their input was considered or acted upon—and if not, why.
Team Power
Start from day one by implementing an orientation process that integrates new team members effectively. Additionally, people leave managers and supervisors more readily than they leave companies or jobs, so any measures you apply to improve the quality of supervision your employees receive will aid in employee retention.
Next month, look for five more tips on how to become a good employer.
Arnold Kahn is president of PrintLink, North America's leading professional placement firm specializing in the graphic communications industry. Contact him at (800) 867-3463.
author: By Arnold Kahn