We set out in the beginning of this book to make the case that a motivated, stable, and engaged workforce is essential to the long-term success for your organization—and that an energized workforce is your most important sustainable competitive advantage. It’s a business strategy that, to get traction, needs to leverage the strengths of your HR team, enlist operations management, and gain some level of senior management’s endorsement. And this means that, in order to sell it and sustain it, you need data to build the case for support, funding to keep the initiatives moving, and mindshare coupled with commitment from those who are required to execute the actions you have planned.
Much of the data you need likely exists. You probably track turnover data already. You may not have attrition information by individual leader, but that is usually obtainable. You should know the cost of losing a valued contributor, as we discussed in Chapter 1. You may also already have in hand many of the relevant key business metrics that are well established and often reported to track performance in your organization.
But this isn’t the whole picture. The missing pieces are best obtained through the voice of the employee. In 2018, 73% of companies in the United States administered some form of an employee survey. That’s the good news. But there is a glaring problem. A majority of those organizations fail to take meaningful action with the results. Many well-intended employers simply don’t have the talent management expertise to turn employee survey data into workable strategies and tactics that can boost business results and contribute to long-term success. In most cases, the problem is that those in the know are not properly demonstrating the metrics that matter to organizational success. This is where it all begins—with the knowledge of the metrics that matter.
Examples of Metrics That Matter
66% of all 887 organizations that participated in the most recent Workplace America study were able to raise customer satisfaction as a result of their engagement and retention initiatives.
Links between customer satisfaction and increased sales are well established.
100% of this year’s best-in-class organizations track links between on-the-job safety and employee engagement and satisfaction.
55% of all United States organizations link engagement to performance. Those that do make this link see a tremendous competitive advantage.
The real value in linking key performance indicators like these to employee engagement, and determining where the largest gains are, is to determine where best to invest limited resources to get the biggest payoff. See Figure 8.1 for the top performance metrics impacted by higher engagement and retention.
For as long as we have been working in this sphere, it has always shocked us how resources, particularly in light of the known impact an engaged and stable workforce can have on performance and profitability, are so hard to build into established budgets. Across the American workplace, employee engagement budgets have fallen for four straight years. In 2014, 71% of all employers carved out some level of funding for employee engagement. By 2018, it was down to 54%. Are executives and finance chiefs saying that customer service, safety, sales, culture, and profitability are less important than they used to be?
The best-in-class organizations all dedicate some of the highest percentages of their labor and operations budgets to engagement strategies. One approach we have long advocated is to move a number of essential employee initiatives (e.g., onboarding, wellness programs, benefits, incentives, training, leadership development) under an “Engagement” budget category for the sole purpose of bringing attention to the importance of this key aspect of talent management.
Over the course of this book, we have provided the data, insights, and tactics that will help you turn these bigger ideas into action. As we make our final kick to the finish line, we provide a series of strategies that will help you fund your engagement and retention initiatives and help ensure the greatest level of success. We begin with the funding:
Next, let’s look at how you can lay the groundwork for the most successful engagement and retention initiative possible.
The bigger goal here is to find ways to weave the vision and beliefs into your culture. As we mentioned earlier, start small. The old adage “Success breeds success” is as true today as it has ever been. Remember the national telecommunications client of ours that went from worst to first on the J. D. Power survey of customer satisfaction? They attribute that success to a focus and determination to improve the customer experience by retaining frontline employees and training leaders on how to engage and inspire them.
According to Jim Bowles, “We believed in the notion that people didn’t leave companies, they leave their managers.” Jim discovered this underlying wisdom during his time as vice president of workforce development at AT&T. With this wisdom, we come full circle to that old nugget that people don’t quit organizations, they quit bad bosses. Viewed from a reverse angle, “That interface between employee and their direct supervisor is the most critical element for the success of the organization.”
When Bowles and AT&T set out to find tools that could improve employee engagement and the likelihood of retention, they turned to TalentKeepers’ strategies because they made sense and were easy for managers to grasp and apply. “That’s such a key element of this because you can get caught up in so much theory,” Bowles explained. “And managers aren’t as interested in that. They want to see results and want to see that this is helping them be successful.”
So the simplicity is key. “Managers want to move on,” Bowles said. “They’re pressured to be successful and deliver results. They’re confronted with 30,000 leadership books and various approaches on how to be effective leaders. But what they really need is to build and strengthen their relationships with the people who work with them. If they do that, then all their other needs as managers will be met.”
So according to Bowles, what were the key factors to getting the initiative funded and achieving success? “The buy-in had to be supported from top to bottom. We had to set up reinforcement mechanisms tied to performance management systems. Everybody wants to have the magic bullet, but engagement and retention is never about one size fits all. It’s about beating the drum on the fact that you have to treat employees individually and focus on their uniqueness. Doing this increases the likelihood of success significantly.
“Of course there has to be a return on investment for the organization, so a key element of success for us was to tie engagement metrics to sales and service performance. The correlation was clear, and this not only provided a strong ROI for the organization, but a real ‘what’s in it for me’ or ‘WIIFM’ for every leader involved.”
Finally, let’s take one last step back to reexamine what a winning strategy looks like:
TalentKeepers is proud to be a leader in shaping how people view engagement and retention in the workplace, and to develop innovative solutions to help organizations everywhere engage and retain employees. Our hope is that this book has helped you identify those strategies best suited for your culture, needs, and budget.