This country is in the eye of an employee attrition storm—a storm that is disrupting businesses and industries across the nation. Businesses nationwide are in search of strategies for attracting and retaining good people.

Times are tough, work today remains blended and blurred. Return-to-office plans have been written, rewritten, delayed, shelved, and in some cases shredded. Work-from-home requirements from employers have turned into work-from-home expectations from employees.

Businesses are experiencing an unprecedented willingness of workers to simply quit. Or worse, they quit but stay. Leaders nationally cannot find people to meet pent-up demand and it’s keeping them awake at night.

Why? Well, consider the challenges.

Employees—particularly younger ones—increasingly expect the freedom to choose when, how, and where they work. Leaders are grappling with a post-pandemic workforce that values net freedom over net worth.

Employee turnover is forecast to be 50-75% higher than pre-pandemic levels. And it’s compounded by the fact that it is taking 18% longer to fill open positions.

Bad news, nearly half of US workers are actively in search of new opportunities. The good news, 52% say jumping ship or leaving, can be prevented.

And, if you think people are most interested in benefits like retirement, sick leave, parental leave, vacation, PTO, and flextime. Think again, these benefits are good, but not enough. Today, both young and older employees are even more interested in up-skilling, career growth, well-being, and culture.

The data is consistent and crystal clear, the two major reasons people jump ship are due to bad bosses AND a lack of career growth. And both are impacted by culture, an environment that either promotes or discourages career growth, well-being, and ultimately employee engagement. Engagement was trending up incrementally but unfortunately, since the pandemic engagement is now trending down.

High engagement fuels (and low engagement tanks) profits, productivity, performance, service, retention, safety, and well-being. So, reinvigorating team culture with a focus on engagement, growth, and well-being will have the greatest impact on attraction and retention.

For over 30 years we’ve been working with companies known as the best places, where the best people can do their best work. We work with leaders who know how to create compelling work environments. Environments that make it very difficult for employees to leave. More so than ever, companies are in search of strategies and insights for creating a best place. Just recently we led and facilitated a full-day event entitled: Leading for Retention: It’s Everyone’s Job.

no silver bullet!

In full transparency, we do NOT have a silver bullet for attracting the best people. Metaphorically, a silver bullet is a simple remedy, a sure-fire solution to a difficult, complex, and/or chronic problem. Once you use it, the problem goes away completely.

So, although there is no silver bullet for attracting talent, we can share a few ideas that may inspire some creative approaches to help you attract quality people and even more important, strategies for compelling people to stay. The bulk of this article is on suggestions for creating a best place where the best people can do their best work.

And regardless of your position, people leader, or individual contributor, everyone can suggest or request these ideas. Everyone can serve as a lifeline for others on the team or in the department. Everyone can draw people up or drag people down. The question is, what do you want to be known for?

So where do you start, recruiting or culture? Both and simultaneously.

You cannot invest in a kick-ass recruiting campaign, attract and hire high-quality people, and onboard them into a toxic department managed by a bad boss. The most significant factor influencing employee engagement is an employee’s relationship with their immediate supervisor. And if that relationship is toxic or unhealthy people will leave.

Engaged people are involved and enthusiastic, they want to stay, they want to strive, and they are inclined to say good things, in other words, they are positive advocates for the brand. In most organizations on average approximately, 33% of your people are ALL IN (fully engaged) another 33% are on the fence and, 33% have quit but stay.

The 33% who quit but stay have become an epidemic sweeping across this country. Better known as the Dead People Working™ syndrome. These are people who show up physically, but they are intellectually, emotionally, and psychologically checked out. Dead People Working are known today as Quiet Quitters. Or even worse, they can be disgruntled, disloyal, distracted, and distracting to their colleagues.

Your best efforts are to focus on those who are on the fence and those who are highly engaged. Why? Because as noted, engaged people choose to stay, want to strive, and are more inclined to say great things about their work and team experiences. And highly engaged employees are 87% less likely to leave the organization.

Gallup research suggests a time-tested path for increasing engagement is to double down on up-skilling & re-skilling managers. That means helping managers establish role clarity and develop coaching skills to increase accountability and performance. It’s evident when leaders focus on developing themselves AND improving the quality of the work experience for their teams, they can triple the positive influence on employees’ productivity, engagement, and retention.

So, what can you do? Two things…

1. brainstorm creative recruiting strategies for attracting quality people and,
2. simultaneously offer skill development for people leaders. Specifically, help leaders develop courage and curiosity skills and create a culture, an environment that encourages, enables, and rewards ongoing conversations.

Up-skill managers (and individual contributors) with courage, curiosity, and conversation skills.

Courage
First, be sure to double down on leadership and people skills for your managers and supervisors. Anyone leading, managing, and supervising people must be given ongoing leadership development training. Ideally skills for becoming more courageous leaders.

Courage is a superpower. Winston Churchill said it best, “We are judged in the testing moments of life. In those moments, we are called to have courage. Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities because it guarantees all others.”

We think the most practical and profound description of courageous leadership is being tough on standards AND tender with people. Courage empowers and enables leaders to draw the best out of people and earn the respect required for holding people accountable to achieving high-performance standards.

Curiosity
People want to add value, we all want to walk away at the end of the day knowing our contributions matter. One of the best strategies for fueling value-added contributions is to provide opportunities for people to be awakened to new ideas, insights, and career opportunities. To increase retention leaders should focus on promoting and encouraging people to be curious to the core.

Courageous leaders focus on helping their people up-skill, re-skill and explore career paths forward. Notice we did not say career paths UP, we said FORWARD. Today the very best leaders are engaging in ongoing conversations with people to help pave the way for growth, learning, experimenting, transparency, development, and career pathing.

Remember it’s important to be offensive and preventative. The data suggests 52% of people who leave say, “It could have been prevented.” So don’t wait for signs of resignation and don’t allow it to happen to you! Retention is everyone’s job.

Here are a few strategies to consider. These are considered the things that matter most. Creating clarity and ongoing communication around these issues paves the way for increasing focus, engagement, and well-being.

Beyond a bad relationship with an immediate supervisor and a toxic culture, two other things get in the way of well-being. Fear and fatigue.

Our daughter is a Flight Medic for Intermountain Healthcare Life Flight. Life Flight has a Red Status protocol, a time reserved to recover from fatigue, critical incidents, or significant decontamination. There’s a reason for this kind of protocol. Deploying a red status is intended to increase safety, minimize mistakes, and maximize well-being.

What can you do to create a Red Status, a protocol that provides time and space to rest, recover and reboot from a difficult shift, incident, project, conversation, or failure?

If your culture doesn’t provide this kind of freedom people can become fearful and/or fatigued. Critical decisions and important work should not be done when under fear or fatigue. People perform best when they are rested, confident, safe, and at peace.

Do not wing it!

Make all of these conversations worthwhile and beneficial. Set your intentions in advance of the meeting so you can plan and prepare. And be sure these conversations are not one-and-done.

Career conversations are not annual performance reviews, and frankly, annual reviews are a tired practice of the past.

You should be engaging in these kinds of conversations at least quarterly and ideally every 2 months depending upon the nature of your job. The more frequently you engage in them the more proficient you’ll become.

Again, do not wait. MOVE! Work on recruiting and culture simultaneously.

Once you attract, hire, and onboard high-quality people, you have to deliver. It’s imperative to develop courageous, curious, and conversation-driven people who are committed to and invested in professional growth and personal well-being.

If you’d like to explore a workshop designed for your team. We customize our programs around your desired outcomes. info@freibergs.com

WHAT COMES NEXT?
We’ll follow this article with tips and tools for:

1. Striving in the work you do and,
2. Saying the right things to build your business/brand reputation.