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Published at 12 / junio / 2019

Keys for retaining talent

Keys for retaining talent

What do we need to do in order to “take care” of the most important resource companies have and “avoid its drain”?

 

Retaining talent is one of the greatest challenges companies have to face. It is a challenge involving different actors within a company: from the HR department, to different area managers and employees. The first can develop and apply excellent Human Resources policies, but these can sometimes become useless due to the managing style of a given manager or due to a bad working environment caused within a team by a person or by a group of people.

 There are several actions that can be taken for retaining talent, and what’s best is that most of them are “for free”.

 

<<< Retaining talent is one of the greatest challenges companies have to face but, do you know how long does a millennial stay at a job? >>> 

 

Salary

Salary is important because it is related to the need of feeling safe and to the satisfaction of needs as well, but it is not everything, since we all know someone who, despite having a very good salary, has decided to leave his/her company and in spite of the several “counteroffers”, has not changed his/her mind.

 

Personal and family life balance

Implementing measures such as flexible hours, telecommuting, extension of leaves, etc. are an important source of satisfaction.

 

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Positive image of the company

Building a “brand” that makes the company stand out as a good employer with relation to “talent attraction and retention” and reinforcing the sense of belonging. Fostering an organisational culture based on the best internal and external practices, built on shared values, and that is coherent between what is said and done, and leading by example… at all hierarchical levels!  

 

Fostering a communicative culture

Boosting descending communication in a clear, frequent and honest way, and informing the workforce on the company’s results, goals, strategies, plans, etc. Focusing on making employees feel informed so that they are aware that they are part of the company and that they are taken into account at the same time that a trust culture is created. Boosting ascending communication and allowing idea, opinion and suggestion contributions, making the employee feel that he/she is an active member of the company, and that his/her opinion is considered and appreciated. In addition, it is very important being able to communicate roles, tasks and goals, which in the end provide assurance on the work that needs to be done and clarity on what we contribute with to the company.

 

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Professional growth

Offering growth possibilities, both vertically and horizontally, with defined career plans, apart from receiving specific training that allows the employee to develop new skills. Another good initiative is to be mentored or tutored by voices of command at a professional level. At this point, it is very important to have a mentor manager who you can learn from and who can be a good advisor. Another initiative could be, for example, offering employees the possibility to create, develop and manage new projects so that, in some way, they can become corporate entrepreneurs.

 

Improving people's life quality

Creating programmes for boosting health (both physical and mental), focusing on issues such as healthy eating, physical exercise or stress management (identified as 21st Century’s most common illness). In this section we could also include creating entertainment spaces within the company (game rooms, nap/resting rooms, etc.), or providing yoga, stress or mindfulness lessons which, in case of not being funded by the company, could be agreed upon with companies or individual professionals belonging to these sectors. Likewise, counting on comfortable working spaces also helps improve people’s life quality. It is not about having a flawlessly designed office, but it is important that employees feel that they work at a nice place that has all the necessary elements for carrying out their job.

 

Boosting relationship among colleagues out of the office

Potentiating ludic events or activities, always related with people’s interests (paella, outdoor barbecues, football matches, excursions, etc.) can be good initiatives for getting to know work colleagues in a relaxed environment and will help boost interpersonal relationships.

 

Good working environment

Focusing on being able to build companies where every morning people are willing to get to work. Being open to carrying out employee climate surveys with the aim of getting to know what the workforce thinks or how it feels and, later on, communicating the results and setting in motion actions for keeping up with the good work and improving those aspects on which results haven’t been “that good”.

These are some questions a company could ask their employees in a climate survey:

  1. Do you know what we expect of you at work?
  2. Do you have the necessary materials and equipment for adequately carrying out your job?
  3. At work, do you get the chance to do a bit better every day?
  4. Within the last 7 days, have you felt valued or rewarded for having done a good job?
  5. Does your supervisor or any other person at work care about you as an individual?
  6. Is there somebody at work that encourages you to develop professionally?
  7. Do you feel that your opinion is taken into consideration?
  8. Do the organisation’s goals or purposes make your job be important?
  9. Do your co-workers commit to doing a good job?
  10. Do you have a good friend at work?
  11. During the last 6 months, has someone within the company talked to you about your progress?
  12. During the last year, have you had the opportunity to learn and grow professionally within your company?

 

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<<< Discover the 10 keys to lead teams and people within an organization >>> 

 

Good managers

So, what does exactly to be a good manager mean? Being a good manager is being a role model for the team, both at a personal and at a professional level, who cares about your interests and motivations, who has enough time to talk to you and to help you solve any problem, and he/she is also someone you can learn from. A good manager should always be open to listening to new suggestions, to listen to his/her team’s feedback when something is not right, and he/she should always give positive and constructive feedback. If we surveyed your team following Gallup’s questions, what do you think they would answer?

 

Good colleagues

Counting on colleagues who help and support you, who do their best for the rest of the team, who follow the motto “you scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours”, who know exactly how their work influences both their colleagues’ work and the company as a whole, who know when to joke around to increase the team’s motivation, who look for the benefit of the whole team and not just their own, and who communicate those things related to work which affect the rest of the team.

 

Boosting 360º positive feedback

Not as something exceptional, but as a development policy related to the organisation’s values and competencies, aimed at boosting acknowledgement. A good practice is giving positive feedback in public, and improvement feedback in private.

And why can all these actions help companies retain people?

From neuroleadership we know that when a person is working at an organisation where one or several of these variables exist: bad working environment, limited or non-existent communication, non-existent acknowledgement, frequent negative feedback, limited or non-existent positive feedback, professional stagnation, bad managers and/or co-workers, heavy workload with no real possibility of personal and professional life balance, etc., our limbic system, which is directly related to emotions, when experiencing one of these risk or threat situations, may develop three kinds of response:

  • Attack
  • Escape
  • Mental block

And, to practical effects, the impacts on the individual are:

  • Tunnel vision: that is to say, the individual sees only one of the perspectives of things (the negative one)
  • Threat generalisation: “everything is bad”
  • Non-identification of one’s own resources (facing everyday life starts to become difficult)
  • Apathy: discouragement takes the individual to not doing anything

 

So, what will the retention capacity of a company towards an individual be when it is making a given person feel this way? And, even if the person stays in the company, what will his/her motivation for work be?

 

As a final reflection, I encourage you to think of the following:

  • Which mark would you give yourself (from 1 to 10) as a manager, taking into account the traits of a good manager we have commented on
  • Which actions could you put into practice in order to loyalise your team?
  • When will you set these actions in motion?
  • As an employee, which actions do you carry out in your day-to-day in order to create a good working environment and contribute to talent retention?

 

Tags: Talento

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