This is From The Balance Beam

[TheBalanceBeam] - Managing for Keeps

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THE BALANCE BEAM
Ideas and Inspiration for Creating a Life that Works
Vol. 2 No. 21, October 23, 2000
Published by Success Builders, Inc.
http://www.SuccessBuildersInc.com
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"He who knows others is wise; he who knows himself is enlightened."
Lao-tzu
In this issue: MANAGING FOR KEEPS
====================================================================== Dear Friends:
It's hard to pick up a business journal or magazine these days without reading something about the challenge of recruiting and retaining good people. Managing to the personal and professional needs of top talent while minding the company's bottom line is a fine balance, and one that we consider in this issue of The Balance Beam.

If you want to check out earlier editions of The Balance Beam that you may have missed, you can easily retrieve them by clicking on http://www.successbuildersinc.com/newsletter.html and going to the Archives section. If you are not yet a regular subscriber to The Balance Beam, you can also enter your subscription information at this location.
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Today's Topic: MANAGING FOR KEEPS

Ask any manager, in most any industry, what their number one challenge these days is, and it's a good bet the response will be retention. Finding and keeping good people is harder than it's ever been before. With unemployment rates at all time lows and a rich and fluid job market offering a banquet of opportunities, the task of holding on to top talent has become the proverbial code to crack.

It's expensive to lose good people. Estimates of outright costs range from 70 to 200 percent of a person's annual salary to find a suitable replacement candidate for the job. And those are the controllable costs. When you factor in the cost of downtime in a first-to-market economy, you just might find that replacement costs become astronomical as critical timeframes slip and competitive advantage evaporates.

Desperate to keep key associates from walking out the door, many managers assume that turnover is about money. The plaintive question, "What will it take to keep you here?" can be heard echoing around corporate America, as would-be deal makers prepare to ante up salary increases unheard of in years past. This, despite the fact that masses of research point to the same conclusion: Most of the time, it's not about money.

In 1999, the Hay Group studied more than 500,000 employees in 300 companies across industry. They found that of 50 identified retention factors, money was among the least important. So what was at the top of the list? Things like career growth, learning and development opportunities, challenging work, the opportunity to be a part of a strong team; oh, and right up there at the top? Good managers. A 1999 study by the Saratoga Institute for the American Management Association identified the top three reasons why people leave their jobs as being 1) managers with poor supervisory and leadership skills, 2) lack of growth opportunities, and 3) inability to speak freely.

A recent Gallup Organization study indicates that most employees rate having a caring manager higher than the salary or benefits associated with the job. In interviews with two million people at over 700 organizations, Gallup found that how long an employee stays with a company, and how productive he is while there, is largely a function of the nature of the relationship with his immediate supervisor.

The message is clear: If you want good people to stay, you have to make building a quality relationship with them your number one priority. Sounds easy enough. But if it were a piece of cake, we wouldn't see employees dropping out of companies like flies to head to the competition. So what is it that managers need to do to build and sustain high quality relationships with their people?

Authors Beverly Kaye and Sharon Jordan-Evans laid out the alphabet soup formula for retaining good talent in their book, "Love 'Em or Lose 'Em: Getting Good People to Stay." While it may not be rocket science, it's the basics that managers frequently forget. Try this new version of your ABC's on for size:

1. Ask: What keeps you here? And commit to learning from the answers.
2. Buck: It stops here. With the manager, that is. Your people and their ability to positively impact on the company are your responsibility.
3. Careers: Support growth and take the time to understand what career goals mean for your employees as individuals.
4. Dignity: Show respect in everything that you do. Simple kindness and compassion goes a long way.
5. Enrich: Energize the job and make it stimulating.
6. Family: Get friendly with it. Your people are whole human beings with lives outside the office that matter to them as much as the job.
7. Goals: Expand options and help people develop meaningful goals that they can relate to.
8. Hire: Fit is it. Make sure you have the right raw materials by doing a good job on the front end of the process.
9. Information: Share it, don't hoard it. People don't work well in a vacuum.
10. Jerk: Don't be one. Enough said.
11. Kicks: Get some. Build some fun into work, for them and for you.
12. Link: Create connections. The more people can relate to the larger whole of the organization, the more contributory they will be.
13. Mentor: Be one. It's the key to growing instead of pushing people to greatness.
14. Numbers: Run them. Give your employees clear standards of measurement and the metrics to gauge their own performance.
15. Opportunities: Mine them. Help your staff learn to think in the language of possibilities.
16. Passion: Encourage it. It always has, and always will make the difference between a good company and a great one.
17. Question: Reconsider the rules. Move beyond the way it's always been done.
18. Reward: Provide recognition. Lots of it. As human beings, we all need to know that our contributions are valued.
19. Space: Provide it. Both physical space and mental space, to think and to process.
20. Truth: Tell it. All the time, and in a way that lands well and is respectful of your staff.
21. Understand: Listen deeper, for what is not being said, as well as to what is being said.
22. Values: Define and align company values with those of your employees.
23. Wellness: Sustain it. And be mindful of the need for rest and relaxation on sustaining strong performance levels.
24. X-ers: Handle with care. Generational differences matter, and there are huge gifts that young employees bring to the table if you take the time to understand their orientation to things.
25. Yield: Power down. Suspend your need for control and share authority. Not only will you get better results, your life will be immeasurably easier.
26. Zenith: Go for it! The sky's the limit to what a turned-on team can produce when you as the manager are willing to invest energy in relationships.

The bottom line for smart managers is that it has never been more critical to care - really care - on a genuine, deep and meaningful level. You've heard it before from the coach and it bears repeating: If you put people first and results second, your people will produce astonishing things. And better yet, they just might stick around.