Why are you losing your best team members at work?
Chances are it’s a combination of hours, flexibility, compensation as well as personal factors like belonging, regular communication and fulfillment.
Employers can certainly fire back here, salaries in tech particularly have gone up quite a bit. Employees of today have more requirements than those in the eighties or even the nineties.
Be it onsite daycare for parents, retirement packages and even flexibility of hours, today’s workforce wants to be treated less like a worker bee and more like a worker being.
The basics of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs don’t go away — people need the basics of compensation and safety in your workplace, then that graduates to rewards and recognition, a socially comfortable working environment and ultimately a way to unlock their true potential.
And certainly your HR team can do the number crunching on what the competitive package should look like. But what can we do in the work environment to get your team back in the game?
Here’s three things we can do to help your team member feel more included and energized at work:
Regular check-ins with their people manager — People knowing your name and sincerely wanting to know if you’re doing well is a basic human kindness, one that can get missed at work, especially in larger companies. It might just be that one additional minute you spend at someones desk or on that Zoom call, but if you can communicate you really care, it resonates.
Highlighting achievements — Everyone needs and desrves feedback to know how to improve, on balance with sincerely acknowledging the contributions they’re making. Being ‘seen’ in this way motivates people to put in more effort as we are then incentivized to get more recognition through greater effort. Bonus points — highlight their achievement in front of others. Double Bonus points — do it in writing!
IRL Communication — We all love email and Zoom (kidding!), but seriously we utilize their convenience to be more productive. Once in a while though, people need that phone call or in person check in, even if just for a few minutes. It can reset a fractured relationship and force people to be less defensive, even more honest with each other.
So funnily enough the best way to retain your best talent is to show them their talent is recognized and appreciated, and they’re more than just a clump of KPIs walking around the office.
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