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Your worst nightmare just happened. You’re two days into a much-needed vacation when you receive a phone message from one of your best employees telling you he resigns. There goes your vacation and instead of relaxing, you spend the time wondering what happened.

Losing a valuable employee unexpectedly — especially in an industry such as secondary woodworking where good employees can be hard to find — can spell trouble for a company. But it’s more of a common occurrence than you might think. Consider these statistics from the 2005 Towers Perrin Global Workforce Study: only 17 percent of Canadian workers reported being highly engaged with their jobs while 66 percent reported being moderately engaged and 17 percent, fully disengaged. According to the study’s findings, engaged employees tend to stay with the same company longer. Indeed, 63 percent of the people who reported being highly engaged had no plans of leaving their company while only 12 percent of the disengaged employees felt the same way.

The old business truism that replacing a customer is more expensive than retaining a current one also applies to employees. Studies put the cost of replacing an employee as high as 150 percent of an annual salary for hourly employees when direct costs such as replacement and training and indirect costs such as lower productivity are factored in. And if you think that the number one reason employees leave is for more money, think again. Monetary incentive is rarely cited as one of the top five reasons.

What causes employees to become disengaged and more likely to leave? There are a host of reasons but there is one in particular that I think every business needs to pay attention to:  company culture. Regardless of the size of your business, if you embrace a culture of respect, fairness and empowerment, and take a genuine interest in your employees’ well-being, you increase the likelihood of keeping your employees for a long time.

Here are seven strategies to help you translate a healthy company culture into actionable steps:

1. Walk your talk
Employees have a sixth sense and can smell “fake” a mile away. You can’t say that employees are your most valuable assets and walk by without acknowledging them. You can’t advocate open communication and not share your company’s vision with the rest of your organization. Successful companies and business owners are authentic. What they say, feel, think and do perfectly match. Do a mental check before speaking and acting, and encourage the rest of your management team to do the same. Don’t make empty promises; if you promise you will do something, do it. Ask for feedback and mean it.

2. Be fully engaged
Someone I know left his company because his boss hardly ever shared anything with him — whether it was the company’s strategies or how well he was performing. Communicating regularly with your employees goes a long way. Take the time to know your team, to know what excites them, what they like about their jobs, what challenges they have and how you can help them. One of the best ways to engage your employees is to make them feel like they are part of the big picture. Explain to them how their contribution impacts the company.

3. Be proactive with employee development
Employees need to know how well they are doing. Rather than simply give your employees a yearly review, make it a year-round practice. Set individual goals with team members at the start of the every year. Follow up with steady support through coaching and possibly outside training. Check in at the mid-year point to ensure they’re on track, and then meet again at year’s end. See yourself as the coach of a team.  How can you help them realize their potential and by the same token help your company achieve strong results?

4. Allow people to learn and grow
 Many companies shy away from empowering their employees for fear that they will not exercise proper judgment in making decisions. In his book The Four Pillars of High Performance: How Robust Organizations Achieve Extraordinary Results, Paul C. Light makes the point that giving employees authority to make routine decisions helps build strong performing companies. Studies have also shown a significant correlation between employee empowerment, job satisfaction and company financial performance. Savvy employers know that opportunities for growth and development through training, education and empowerment inspire employees and demonstrate investment in that person. Simple things like sending a team member to a trade show and then sharing the information through a presentation reinforce that empowerment.

5. Watch for the signs
Believe it or not, people have an “internal clock” that starts ticking louder as their need for change gets stronger. There’s an HR assessment called The Inventory of Work Attitudes and Motivation that some companies use to measure how long people will do the same thing before feeling the need for change. In one case study a company was losing some of its best employees after two to three years. During  exit interviews, the employees could not really pinpoint any particular reason for their departures. They liked the company and were happy. After agreeing to take the assessment, results showed that these employees needed changes after two to three years. When the company introduced new responsibilities within the employees’ position, retention increased. Regularly check your employees’ level of motivation and enthusiasm for their work. Consistently employ strategy number two and when you “hear” those employee “clocks” ticking, offer alternatives such as working on a new machine or different job responsibilities before they choose the option of leaving.

6. Practice the Golden Rule
How do you want to be treated by the people around you? Chances are it’s no different than how your employees want to be treated. For some reason, as people move into managerial roles, they often adopt a whole new set of beliefs that bosses must be tough. Far from the truth! Bosses, whether they are business owners, managers or supervisors, have a responsibility to model fair and respectful behaviour. Rude and demeaning behaviour is never a motivator. So while there may be times when you’re frustrated by an employee’s actions you’ll be more likely to elicit a positive response by calmly discussing the problem in private and working together to come up with solution. Show employees you care for their well-being. Appreciate their work and their own unique qualities. Say thank you.

7. Create a fun environment
Research conducted at California State University showed that humour in the workplace increases employees’ creativity and productivity and decreases absenteeism. Involve your employees in deciding how they’d like their workplace to be more fun. Some ideas include scheduling mini time outs to help relieve stress, a “joke corner” in the lunchroom, or regular potluck or pizza lunches. What’s important is that you enjoy yourself as well (see strategy one).

All of these strategies are easy to afford and implement. What they cost is some reflection time assessing the culture of your company. Ask yourself some questions: Am I a good boss? Do my employees like coming to work? Your answers can mean the difference between a mediocre workplace with a high employee turnover and an outstanding work environment where employees feel valued and inspired.

printed in Woodworking Canada.com 

This entry was posted on Friday, February 29th, 2008 at 12:56 pm and is filed under Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.