Maximizing The Opportunities And Challenges Presented By The Workforce Of The Twenty-First Century

Maximizing the Opportunities and Challenges Presented by the Workforce of the Twenty-First Century

Part II: Now That We’ve Found ‘Em, How Do We Keep ‘Em?

Your company’s future profitability (and viability) may be limited by its ability to retain highly qualified and motivated employees. Further, the stability and commitment of your workforce are accurate predictors of how well your company will compete for market share and how favorably it can manage its assets and resources.

To ensure competitive and financial success, profit-conscious employers take creative steps to ensure that their employees feel connected to the outcome of their work and the larger strategies of the corporation. They also provide programs which help employees feel in control on work-life matters.

Consider that over half of the 352 senior human resources executives surveyed by Techometrica, Inc., a New Jersey-based research firm, stated that turnover was especially high among workers under age 30. But, when you’re engaged in developing programs and practices to address this trend, how do you know which strategies will work best?

This afternoon, we’re going to explore some of the novel approaches taken by organizations which are consistently identified as winners in their chosen fields (Southwest Airlines, Federal Express, General Electric, 3M). These organizations also happen to be some of the best places on earth to work. We’re going to take a closer look at the four major themes which seem to prevail in the retention programs developed by these and other successful organizations.

The first of these is to:

1. Provide a Work Environment Which Contributes to Meaningful Work. This can be achieved by:
1. Ensuring your employees are closely aligned to your company’s values, leadership, and vision. Because commitment and loyalty are nurtured by affiliation:
1. Establish "mentoring arrangements" rather than strict "supervisor/subordinate" relationships;
1. In addition to developing the skills, knowledge and leadership abilities of new and seasoned employees, mentoring strengthens employee commitment.
2. Under the guidance of a willing mentor, new hires spend more time being productive and less time learning to be productive. For those being mentored, the time and effort infested in their technical/professional advancement is invaluable.
2. Educate your managers in the skills of leadership. A leader:
1. Is a coach and team player who empowers employees;
2. Gives employees the freedom to determine the best way to accomplish their work;
3. Gets and keeps their employees solidly lined up behind the organizations core purpose and objectives;
4. Lets employees know through myriad ways -- some large, but most, small -- that they’re important and cared about -- first as people, and then as professionals; and
5. Enables each employee to perform at his or her highest level by removing, through personal as well as systemic means, the obstacles which prevent the employee from doing so.
3. Invite employees to contribute toward the solution of company problems by discussing with them the consequences of the problem and enlisting their ideas in helping to solve it;
4. Provide growth opportunities and the training necessary to enable employees to achieve growth;
5. Define career paths and implement career and performance development programs (appraisals and initiatives);
6. Encourage and reward cross-training; and
7. Ensure there is respect across all levels. Being valued and respected by one’s employer quite possibly is the most important practice in developing and maintaining employee commitment.
2. Giving employees suitable opportunities to achieve technical/professional growth and the freedom to pursue these opportunities.
3. Providing employees timely, relevant and honest communications through:
1. Employing a more-detailed and intense orientation process;
2. Engaging in frequent and regular one-on-ones with new hires during the first sixty days of employment;
3. Holding staff meetings which reach across functions;
4. Conducting routine attitude, productivity and customer satisfaction surveys and sharing the findings;
5. Tailoring your communications to emphasize the values in your core culture; and
6. Using storytelling to educate, inform, motivate and inspire employees.
1. Stories are devices for creating and maintaining a widespread understanding of the subtle cultural and political realities underlying a specific organization’s life.
2. Storytelling is a dynamic strategy for empowering employees to understand and embody an organization’s cultural values.
3. Storytelling is the most effective way to show what happens if you don’t do something the right way -- and what happens if you do.
4. Storytelling can help employees accept a new initiative and create a shared vision of the company’s future.
5. To be effective, stories you use to lead your workforce should:
1. Contain patterns that include dealing with adversity, obtaining scarce resources, or overcoming challenges;
2. Explain the cause and effect of one’s choices, thus making meaning out of one’s experiences;
3. Describe lessons learned; and
4. Demonstrate the humanity of the storyteller, since all of us have experienced failure and have made mistakes.
4. Respecting and Satisfying the Work and Family Needs of Your Employee Complement’s Diverse Groups
1. Ninety-seven percent of the 1,000 adult workers responding to the Work Trends Survey conducted by the John L. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University between February 5 and February 22, 1999 and released March 18, 1999, stated that "the ability to balance work and family life is more important than any other job factor."
2. Although the reasons differ, both Boomers (defined as people from 34 through 53 years of age) and GenXers (those just entering the work force to employees in their early thirties) have compelling needs for flexibility in their work situation. You need employees from both these groups because:
1. Boomers bring years of management and leadership expertise, possess a substantial base of knowledge and experience, and can be used as a valuable source of mentors, trainers and facilitators to spread their wealth of experience to others.
2. GenXers are true "knowledge workers" who value highly their most recent, interesting work assignments, appreciate continuous training in their fields of interest, want a better balance of occupational and personal goals, and thrive on frequent feedback about how their work is being used and how valuable it is to the organization.

 

The second strategy requires your supervisors to:

2. Be Flexible Wherever Possible. This includes taking an open and creative approach toward:
1. Redesigning the way work is done. Is work really being done efficiently? Work should be redesigned based on employees’ interests;
2. Considering the implementation of compressed work schedules. These are fixed work schedules which enable full-time employees to complete the basic 80-hour biweekly work requirement in less than 10 workdays;
3. Establishing, where possible, flexible work schedules. These are workdays which are composed of core hours and flexible hours;
4. Implementing, where feasible, telecommuting and virtual office arrangements. Telecommuting allows employees to work at home or at another approved location away from their regular work site;
5. Giving Job Sharing a try. A key to the success of this strategy is to make sure up front that both individuals are compatible. Also, you need to convey to others that what exists is two people in one job, NOT two people, two jobs;
6. Offering Sabbaticals;
7. Implementing flexible leave practices. Instead of restricting the use of sick leave to times when an employee is unable to report for work due to his or her own illness, extend the benefit to cover illness in the employee’s immediate family;
8. Providing on-site wellness/fitness facilities, ATM, dry cleaning and other personal services.

It’s important to remember, however, that regardless of the program or programs you adopt, your programs will fail to produce the desired results if your supervisors fail to be open to new ideas or lack the ability to establish open lines of communications. To facilitate supervisors’ development in these skills, successful organizations provide extensive ongoing information and support for supervisors.

The third strategy is a well-known one:

3. Offer Employees a Compensation and Benefits Program Which is Responsive to Their Needs
1. Turn-ons for GenXers include signing bonuses, lucrative merit increase plans, variable pay matrices, learn-more-earn-more pay systems, at-risk compensation, stock options and retention bonuses.
2. Boomers value benefits more than cash compensation and consider as genuine motivators the ability to purchase additional vacation time, pre-tax health care spending accounts, per-diem arrangements for caring for elderly relatives, employer-sponsored long-term care benefits for themselves and their families, continuing training and educational (tuition reimbursement) benefits, and employee assistance programs which provide referrals for estate planning, tax assistance and help in untangling the web of Medicare, Medicaid and other social programs for the elderly and disabled.

 

And, finally:

4. Recognize Employees’ Contributions in an Appropriate and Meaningful Manner
1. Employee appreciation doesn’t have to be expensive or complicated. According to the National Association for Employee Recognition, praise and thanks still are the most neglected social gestures in the workplace. At minimum, employees could be recognized for their achievements through:
1. Inviting an employee to teach a short course or lead a workshop at work;
2. Using "face" mail instead of voice- or e-mail to congratulate/recognize an employee for an important achievement.
2. To be effective, recognition must be timely, creative, appropriate and consistent.
3. In their book, Finding and Keeping Great Employees, Jim Harris and Joan Brannick suggest that 50 percent of an organization’s incentives and rewards should be connected to its primary core culture.
4. To learn whether your investment in formal recognition programs provides the return you desire, ask yourself the following questions:
1. Is your work group excited about the program?
2. Does the program describe how and why you should recognize others?
3. Are the program guidelines clear and communicated well?
4. What part of the program can be improved?Disclaimer:

Disclaimer:

The ideas presented in these materials are general in nature and not intended to be construed as legal advice and cannot be relied on by any person or entity as legal advice pertaining to any specific situation.