What can you do to retain employees? What can you do to increase employee performance?
The common element among these three questions is people, and how you attract, retain and motivate them, no matter what area they worked in.
It is the people and their attitudes that make the difference. And you, the business owner and your management team, have to first make the difference.
Look inside
You cannot have something on the outside if you do not have it on the inside.
In other words, you cannot attract good employees if you do not have the right attitude towards your existing employees and provide a good working atmosphere and growth opportunities.
Here is a summary of a team's top answers on what helps to retain employees and increase employee performance:
Retaining employees
Keep your promises
Build employees' self-esteem
Good access to management
Training and cross-training
Staff events/team-building
Incentives - recognition and rewards
Full-time employment for key people
Added responsibility, empowerment
Good working environment
Advancement opportunities
Hire the right people
Communication
React on employee suggestions
Regular staff meetings, parties
Flexible hours, rotating shifts
Clear policies and expectations
Everyone is equal
Partner with other businesses for off-season employment
Increasing employee performance
Ongoing staff training
Keep employees informed of status
Frequent/consistent rewards and recognition for performance
Set goals, review, evaluate, feedback
Integrity, ethics, conduct, praise
Empowerment, creative input
Proper systems, good equipment and safe working conditions
Good management
Include employees in problem-solving
Lead by example
Bonus - by hour
Discounts, family and friends
Mentoring programmes
Be sensitive to personal issues
When you take a close look at these two areas, you can see a lot of overlap. What you do to increase performance also retains employees and vice-versa.
Some of the main areas that are commonly overlooked are orientation training, the establishment of team and individual goals, having ongoing reviews and providing constructive feedback.
Without these elements, employees do their work without getting any feedback on their performance.
How can you expect your employees to meet or exceed your expectations if they do not know what or how they are doing in relation to your expectations?
What motivates employees the most and what keeps them loyal? Based on research, here are the three top elements:
Full appreciation of work done
Full appreciation of work done is recognition.
Recognition is positive reinforcement. Positive reinforcement of actions gets those actions repeated.
Recognition and praise reinforces your belief about yourself and helps make you think you are better than you may have thought you were.
Positive reinforcement is what builds your self-esteem. Your self-esteem is the way you see and feel about yourself either internally through your own beliefs or externally through what you accept as the beliefs of others.
If you feel good about yourself and you believe others feel good about you, you perform better than you would when you see the opposite side of the coin.
People perform in a manner that is consistent with how they see themselves.
So, the key is to help people build their self-esteem.
You cannot motivate another person to do anything.
Everyone knows that he can only accomplish so much on his own and that each person is a product of his environment.
You have the opportunity to create the environment. You can only provide the means and the atmosphere in which others motivate themselves.
You are the leader, and you must set the example. Take the time to define the appropriate behaviour you want to see in your employees, then start demonstrating them.
Feeling of being involved
By bringing all employees together in a room for a meeting, you create a team environment.
By including them and sharing information with them, you are giving your employees an opportunity to share your perspective.
By sharing the results of the period with them and asking them what went well and what areas could use some improvement, you are obtaining a wealth of information and including them in the overall success of your operation.
Help in personal problems
Do you take the time to listen to your employees??? personal problems, understand and show them that you care?
Personal problems often interfere with work performance.
Take the time to help your employees with their personal problems. Coach them to look for solutions, and they will feel closer to you.
In turn, they will perform better because of your concern. People do not care how much you know, until they know how much you care.
It all adds up
From this point on, you will notice that employees will go out of their way to do a great job because you took the time to include them, empower them, thank them and show them that you care.
Keep in mind that actions that get recognised or rewarded will be repeated. Are you demonstrating those behaviours?
Now, how does all this help to attract employees?
Well, if you have happy employees, you will have happy customers.
Happy employees and happy customers lead to loyalty.
When you have loyal employees and clients, you will never have a problem attracting staff.
Article by Bob Urichuck, associate consultant at d'Oz International, who is also a professional speaker, trainer and author. For information on his training and workshops, call 6391-3733, e-mail consultancy@d-oz.com or visit www.d-oz.com.
This article was first published in The Straits Times on Jun 9, 2007.
