Want to Retain Your Best Employees? Keep Them Happy and Engaged at Work

According to economist David Birch, “the average college graduate will have 12 jobs by the time they are 50.” That equates to employees changing jobs every 2.5 years.

That’s a sobering statistic for IT managers. Turnover costs you time and money, not to mention the hassle of recruiting, interviewing and hiring. If job-hopping has become the new norm for employees, what can you do to keep your best team members happy and engaged? While some job moves may be out of your control, below are techniques and tactics you can use to increase employee retention and reduce the chance of your star employee flying the coup.

Understand Why Great Employees Leave
There are many reasons why employees leave. But two reasons you may not have given enough weight to include:

1. They feel unappreciated

According to a Yahoo! Small Business Advisor article, employees feel unappreciated when management:

• Never acknowledges the work done or says thank you
• Consistently criticizes work without any compliments to add motivation
• Praises other employees on a regular basis
• Yells at or otherwise mistreats the employee

2. The employee holds unrealistic expectations

Did you paint too rosy of a picture during the interviewing process? While you don’t want to scare away potential employees, it’s important to be up front about the job and the company to give a realistic 360-degree view of the position.

Improve Employee-Manager Relations
There’s a saying that goes, “employees don’t leave companies, they leave managers.” Ouch. Whether you know it or not, you play an integral role in creating and establishing healthy work relationships. A simple compliment—“thank you,” “nice work,” or “well done”—can go a long way.

According to the Globoforce Workforce Mood Tracker™, 78% of U.S. workers said being recognized for their good work motivates them in their job. In fact, Google (notorious for the perks they provide), came out with a surprising list of what employees valued most at work: “even-keeled bosses who made time for one-on-one meetings, who helped people puzzle through problems by asking questions, not dictating answers, and who took an interest in employees’ lives and careers.” 

Learn to Read the Signs
Most employees don’t leave on a whim. They usually make the decision to start searching for other opportunities, interviewing with other companies, and accepting another job after a great amount of internal debate.

Ways to tell if employees may have “checked out” or are thinking about leaving include:

• They are frequently late, absent or sick
• Production drops
• They seem more quiet than usual
• Less participation
• Their behavior changes significantly

Take Exit Interviews Seriously
Exit interviews can give incredible insight into uncovering recurring internal issues and problems. While you may be ready to dismiss the employee and move on with filling the position, you should take the exit interview process seriously.

An exit interview can be structured with a set of pre-determined interview questions, or it can be an informal conversation. Always work to preserve the relationship when an employee resigns. You never know if the employee may return or end up being a valuable recruiting and referral source in the future.

Additional Ideas for Improving Employee Retention

Further ideas for improving employee retention:

• Conduct regular anonymous employee or team surveys
• Ask for feedback on a consistent basis
• Have regular touch points with your best people
• Take action when other employees aren’t pulling their weight or aren’t cutting it; one bad apple in the barrel can ruin the whole team
• Foster employee and career development
• Give employees a reason to be loyal

Proactively planning different strategies for holding on to your best employees is an important responsibility. Taking the time to implement these tips, tactics and techniques will be a worthy investment for you, your company and your team.

In a recent blog, we wrote about salary and benefits requirements for IT job seekers – and why candidates need to know everything they want (compensation) before starting the interview process with potential employers. Salary and benefits are key factors when determining whether a job is the right one for you. But there’s one other component in the decision-making process that is very important, and often overlooked, during the job hunt.  While people tend to fixate on the total compensation package, they sometimes forget to ask “is the company’s culture the right fit for me?”

How many of us have taken a job because we were tantalized with the incredible package the company was offering? I’ve been sucked in before. I remember back in the late 90’s being courted by a large telecom company – the job would certainly fast track my career, and the salary and benefits were unreal. I liked the job and employer I was working for at the time – it was a great company with a culture that I really fit into.  But the title, money and benefits the courting company was throwing at me just seemed too good to pass up.  I accepted their offer. And to this day, I regret that decision.  The day I started the job with my new employer, I knew it wasn’t going to work out.  The work environment was stuffy and stifling. Co-workers were always looking out for number one. I felt isolated. I was there for two years but it seemed like eternity.

You see, I forgot to ask about what the culture at this large corporation was like, and how I was going to fit into it. I interviewed with a fellow I had worked with before – he was my manager at a previous employer.  I figured “it must be cool if he’s here.”  NOT.  Shortly after I came on board with the new employer, the manager who hired me (and who I had worked with before) bolted. He forgot to tell me during the interview process that the company’s culture was hierarchical, bureaucratic, and very political.  Not a good fit for me, as my style is less formal and much more entrepreneurial.  I should have done my due diligence and researched the company’s culture. I should have asked the employees I interviewed with how the culture compared to that of my current employer.  But this was the ‘90s and dollar signs were dancing around in my head. I put culture on the back burner. 

 A hard lesson learned. But I’ll never make the same mistake. Yes, money and benefits matter. But so does a company’s culture. Remember, you’ll be working there 40, 50, 60 hours or more a week. You’ll have new processes to follow, new management styles to contend with, and new co-workers that you’ll have to get along with (or try to anyway). And if you’re not comfortable with any of these, you may be starting a new job on the wrong foot – and most likely, it won’t get any better.

Some can argue, like me for example, that company culture is as equally important as the compensation package. Salary and benefits matter to me. But so do the people I surround myself with five days out of the week. The staff at Agile is a diverse group of people with diverse backgrounds and experiences.  They are all professional. They are hard working. Delivering exceptional service to clients is what drives all of us.  Oh, and everyone at Agile is nice, and respectful of others. They are also involved in their communities and give back in many ways.

This past week, I had the pleasure of joining my fellow co-workers at the Komen Atlanta Race for the Cure. Everyone took time out of their busy weekend schedules to support a cause that is so important to our CEO, Tricia Dempsey, an eight year breast cancer survivor.  And everyone participated, not because we had to, but because we wanted to. 

Last evening, our staff celebrated with clients, consultants and partners in honor of their support of our company over the past year. It was one of the nicest corporate events I have attended – and I’ve attended many over the past 20+ years.  Why?  Everyone was personable, friendly and genuine.  And those traits are important to me – both inside and outside of work. The values and culture at Agile fit my personal values and needs.  And that’s why I love working here.

Don’t underestimate the value of a company’s culture.  Money may pay the bills and buy you a deluxe apartment in the sky, but as the old adage goes – it doesn’t guarantee happiness. And who wants to spend half their day (at work) being miserable? Not me!

We talk a lot about top talent – how these workers make up just 20% of the IT talent pool, how they are more productive (200% more than average workers) and innovative, and how difficult they can be to find – especially those professionals with high-demand skills.

It would be great if we could identify all top talent, put them in a “one size fits all” box and assign them to companies as required. But it’s not that easy. Top talent means different things to different organizations. Company culture plays a large part in defining what top talent actually looks like. For example, a hiring manager may be excited about a candidate who has strong technical skills,  but once the interview is over, the manager realizes that the candidate would not fit in to the company’s culture. Next!  

And therein lies the challenge – finding the right IT professional who possesses the necessary skills to do the job successfully, while also being a good fit with the company’s culture.

Culture can be characterized by attitudes, experiences, beliefs, and values of an entire organization.  The attributes of an organization’s culture can be tangible, such as dress code, or intangible, such as shared values. In order to find your “top talent” it is important to think through all the attributes of your organization’s culture before launching a job search. Ask yourself and other members involved in the hiring process these questions:

• What are the values of the company? How do you know?
• How important is it that employees are highly committed to the organization’s mission? How do individual members contribute to the advancement of our mission?
• Is leadership a core value of the organization? How are decisions made and problems solved?
• What does the organization chart look like? Is your organization hierarchical or flat?
• What is the physical work environment like? Do you have offices, cubicles, or open workspaces? Are there common areas such as reception, a kitchen, or a lunch room?
• Is diversity of backgrounds, experiences, or beliefs important to your organization?
• How does the organization acknowledge personal successes and other milestones?
• What’s the work/life balance for staff?

Based on your answers to the above, determine the following:

• How do you define top talent? What does the perfect employee look like, and why do you believe this?
• How will you know when you’ve found top talent? What areas of that definition are subjective, and what does this tell you about the values and beliefs of the organization?
• How does the hiring process reinforce the behaviors of your values?
• How will you measure the success of recruiting top talent in the short-term and in the long-term?

Now that you know what top talent means in your organization, be sure to communicate your culture throughout the hiring process so that you will always attract and recruit the RIGHT people. A good way to start communicating company culture is in the actual job posting (this will also help recruiters reinforce the information to candidates during the qualification and selection process):

• Include your full mission statement within the posting.
• Offer an explicit description of the organization’s culture and values, such as “We work in a collaborative, team-based environment.”
• When listing job requirements, use language that mirrors specific values, such as “Collaborate with …” or “Produce results on. …”
• When listing candidate qualifications, include specific values such as “entrepreneurial” or “team player.”
• If diversity is an attribute of your culture, make sure to include this information. At the very least, include your organization’s “equal opportunity employer” statement.

What does top talent look like in your organization? What are some successful ways you’ve been able to attract and recruit top talent? If you need help finding top talent, contact a reputable IT staffing firm like Agile – we’ll be happy to speed your time to top talent!