Employees join your company but they leave you when seeking greener pastures. So how do leaders retain talented employees?
Money counts but compensation trails 5 other benefits in retaining talented employees, according to researchers.
The top three factors to retaining a talented workforce critical to productivity and profitability are: 1. exciting, challenging or meaningful work 2. supportive management (good boss) and 3. being recognized, valued and respected followed by 4. career growth, learning, and development and 5. a flexible working environment.
That’s why the most effective leaders conduct a PRE-EXIT interview six months after their new-hire’s start date. This “pre” in pre-exit stands for preemptive.
This preemptive exit interview is designed to serve as a deterrent to a future exit interview that could cost your company twice the salary of your incumbent employee in replacing him or her, according to research.
Opportunity Meeting
How do you conduct a preemptive exit interview? You begin by inviting your employee to an Opportunity Meeting so that both of you can maintain and nurture a mutually successful and growth oriented working environment that in particular meets the needs of the employee.
Your invitation to the employee’s Opportunity Meeting might look something like this as adapted from Love’em or Lose’em by Beverly Kaye and Sharon Jordan-Evans:
You are invited to attend the next step in your continued development.
You make a difference and I value your contributions.
Let’s discuss some things that are important to you and me:
What is most energizing about your work?
Are we fully using your talents?
What is inhibiting your success?
What can I do differently to best assist you?
What might entice you away?
What else could I do to keep you here?
Please schedule a meeting with me in the next two weeks to discuss this
and anything else you’d like to talk about.
You begin that retention process with a keen sense of listening and learning from your direct report to more effectively engage and challenge them and more consistently bring out the best in them to grow themselves and your bottom-line.
Sure the exit door can swing open at any time but at least your ability to appreciate, recognize and respect your employee will help keep that door closed. At least for awhile.
That’s why consistently following up with your direct report is necessary to extend the value of your pre-exit interview and retain your talented employee.
For more ideas on creating a culture of mutual respect in the workplace, purchase a 300-page book available on Amazon.com filled with 77 examples from business, sports and politics.
It’s titled: LOVING Like a Leader with Empathy- one of three books in The Leadership Mints Series designed to help leaders refresh their feeling for leading. And as a bonus, the postscript titled- BUSINESS: A HUMAN EXPERIENCE — shares the impetus for this book on empathy impacting the bottom line.The two other books in The Leadership Mints Series -now available on Amazon.com — include THINKING Like a Leader with Clarity and SPEAKING Like a Leader with Civility.
The 3-books
in The Leadership Mints Series
available on Amazon.com
in print and e-book
What is a Leadership Mint?
Consumed like a breath mint — quick and on-the-go — a Leadership Mint is a short story that energizes leadership behaviors and personalizes leadership principles so they are more easily remembered, more readily acted upon and more fully applied.
