Employees are Everything: Retention
It’s very hard to find good employees nowadays, so keeping our good employees is more important than ever. But what can you do as a business leader to help with retention? Traci and Rob go through four practical tips for building employee retention through transparency and intentionality.
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Traci:
So, we're going to talk about retention today, which is a really interesting topic to kind of plug into our hiring and onboarding series here. But I think one of the reasons why we really wanted to talk about it was it is so important right now. What is happening in the marketplace, what we're experiencing as leaders with the amount of, not just turnover, but also—as we talked about before—the stress on the labor market, it's much harder to find good people. And so keeping our good people is more important than ever.
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Traci:
We're starting to see some interesting things happening in the marketplace today, and some reactions by leaders that I thought would be kind of fun to talk about and important to talk about. So I'm excited about today's topic.
How are you doing, Rob?
Rob:
I'm good, Traci.
Yeah, I'm excited about today's topic, too. This is something obviously we've paid attention to for years and years and years. But just to be fully transparent, our turnover numbers and retention numbers kind of took care of themselves for almost the first decade of doing Sparkbox. We had, for the vast majority of that, single-digit turnover numbers, and retention was really, really good. We actually had conversations along the way, "Is our retention too good?"
And over the last couple years, that's kind of flipped on its head a little bit. We're still in line, as we've talked about before, with kind of industry averages or better, but it's been something that we've definitely become more prioritized in our leadership conversations, and had these conversations to see if we can affect change here.
Traci:
When the stress on the labor market, when we become very aware of it, or we feel a little bit of the pain of how hard it is to replace somebody, sometimes as leaders, we can get a bit fearful, and when we get fearful, we can start to make bad decisions or fall into habits we shouldn't.
We're starting to see leaders become much slower to fire people they should fire, and we're seeing leaders become a little bit quicker to promote when maybe they shouldn't promote people into those empty positions. Either people aren't ready, or they're just not the right person for that seat.
We want to just heighten awareness around this. How are we doing as leaders with this marketplace? How is our team feeling? And, how are we reacting to our, maybe, fear around people leaving? Are we maintaining good habits? Are we letting things slip here and there, and giving ourselves kind of the excuse? "Well, it's hard." "I know he is a jerk." Or, "I know he's kind of disrupting the morale." Or, "She's a super negative person, but we need the warm body. We have to keep somebody in that seat." Or, "I know they're a little green, but I think they can rise to the occasion. We're just going to go ahead and promote them and give them those responsibilities."
We don't realize kind of that long-term effect to this kind of short-term fear-based decision. Are you seeing that when you're talking to other leaders or interacting with people about the marketplace?
Rob:
Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, I've seen that several times in conversations that I've been in, and somewhat even in our own organization. There is a lot of fear. It feels like there is a little momentum if a couple people leave, and is there more people going to leave? It's really easy to look at everything and then start operating out of fear, rather than good principle decision making.
I don't think it's all just fear; there is some reality in some of these scary things going on. If we don't have the people that we need to run things, then our businesses will suffer. Especially if you're in a service-based business, where you rely so heavily on having qualified humans that can do the work, interact with your clients. That is the thing you are selling.
Traci:
Right.
Rob:
So I think it's not only just fear. There's reality mixed in there, too. But separating those things out a little bit and just accepting things for what they are. And then, what effect can we have on the realities that exist, I think, is a huge piece of this.
Because one of the biggest things that I'm seeing is this whole idea of second-degree turnover, second-degree burnout, where we don't have the people we need, so we're asking more of the people who are still left, to their detriment, that they're doing more than they should. They're committing to more than they should. And they're either burning out, or they're wanting to leave or move on because their new reality sucks—for lack of a better way to put it.
So this isn't only just a first-degree problem. I think that when we're looking at our turnover numbers, we have to be careful to recognize all of the effects. It's a lagging indicator on what's going on.
Traci:
Yeah. I think the silver lining I'm starting to see when we're getting phone calls at Navigate is that leaders are realizing, "You know what? I need to pay attention to the people that I have. Maybe some of these people who are struggling, maybe I don't necessarily need to fire them. Maybe I can coach them up. Or maybe some of these people that are a little green, maybe what I need to do is get them some training.”
Whereas before, they may not have invested in coaching or may not have invested in training, now they're willing. They realize that's a good investment because they could help this leader become a better leader. They can help this person be trained up into that spot a little bit sooner. And so instead of paying the price on the back end of hiring or firing, they're actually investing in their people to coach them up. I think that's definitely a silver lining to the situation now.
Or, looking at their processes and realizing, "Okay, if we're going to be a leaner, meaner version of ourselves, how can we have the right processes? How can we have the right support systems in place?" Whereas before, maybe they weren't putting as keen of an eye on every little aspect.
So I will say that I have seen that to be a little bit of a silver lining of what's coming out of this, is that leaders are leaning in a little bit more to, "How can I make the situation I have better? Can I change it for the better?"
Rob:
Yeah, and that's just intention. I think that gets back to not operating out of a fear place, but operating out of a reality place of what can I do? What changes can I affect inside my organization? And usually, there's quite a bit, right? One of the things that I say all the time is, if something's going well, that's my company, somebody else probably did that. But if it's broken, that's my fault, and I'll take responsibility of it. So that's one of those things that I think we can all be that first person to step up, look at a problem, find other solutions.
What I find a lot in my coaching is fear has an effect of really narrowing focus and seeing a smaller and smaller solution set. Whereas if we stop and take a look at it and try to remove some of that fear or give names to it, the view starts broadening a little bit and we get a little more creative about solving those problems.
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Traci:
Yeah, that's true. I know we want to keep tossing out some tips around retention. Before we started recording, we started talking about how your team got together in this last week. We started talking about the importance, especially today, of physically getting our teams together. So talk about how that was for you all.
Rob:
So just to set context here, prior to 2020, we had a couple offices in a couple different cities, and the vast majority of our team was in one of those offices. We still had a couple remote people, but that was the exception, not the rule. When things kind of changed in 2020, we've gone and now we are a remote-first distributed company.
So last week we got the entire team together for the first time since 2019, since becoming a fully distributed company. It was awesome just to meet all of the people that you had worked with, that you had talked to, that you had possibly weekly Zooms with, but had never really been in the same physical place.
We kind of designed the week to where our major goal was to have people be able to enjoy some shared experiences together. There was some different times for education and team building and fun activities. But I mean, just some of the memories that you can build, like meeting somebody for the first time and realizing, "Oh, you're taller than I thought you would be." Or, "You're a lot shorter than I thought you would be," amongst another bunch of other realizations.
There was in our Slack channel this morning, people talking about it, and somebody made the comment about one of our employees being really good at everything, like corn hole or throwing things, or remind everybody, "Don't go up against this person if there is any kind of athletic pursuit involved." Those things last.
Traci:
Yeah, and they're so important. I mean, I know we've talked about trust in the fundamental attribution era, and that the best way to really build trust is to get to know each other just on a simple, just getting to know that person better, learning more about who they are, where they came from, how they think, how they laugh, what makes them who they are, really bonds us in a way that we are able to be more productive, we are able to be more forgiving, we are able to, most importantly, assume the best first of each other.
That is really key in high-performing teams. We want success for people that we know. And when we know each other better, we want success for each other. Not just the team, and not just ourselves, but actually for the individuals on the team. And that's very unique thing to cultivate on teams. So just simply getting teams together is important.
I'd say phase two of that is to educate the team together. So you're not just together hanging out and getting to know each other, which is, like I just said, very important, but you're also learning together, growing together. Learning tools together so you have the same language. Learning how to become a better team. Teams don't just wake up great teams. It doesn't just come together, just like leaders don't just wake up good leaders. They have to grow in that skill.
I think it's interesting for teams to realize that being a team is a skill that we learn together, and when we're educated together and we are growing together, we are becoming a better team.
Rob:
Yeah, absolutely. Somebody came in and facilitated a workshop on Courage, Trust, and Bravery in the Workplace, and that was a pretty intentional choice that we made. One of the big benefits that I think we got out of it was by having a third-party come in and facilitate that, the vast majority of one of our workshop or retreat days was everyone got to be a participant, and that includes Ben and I, the owners, founders, leaders of the company, as well as the leadership team.
And I tell you what, it was a really cool experience being able to participate with lots of people on our team in a way that I didn't... It wasn't my room to hold; that's the best way I have to put it. And how I could show up and participate in some of the role-playing exercises. And some of the discussions got to be different because I wasn't leading, I wasn't trying to hold the room together. Obviously still showing up intentionally and all that fun stuff, but just very different from a, "Hey, we're going to be peers today. We're in this together."
Traci:
That is so important. When we go in and facilitate teams, we tell the leaders, "We want you to sit back and participate. We don't want you to lean back too far and not be a participant. We want you right there in the thick of it because your team needs to see you as part of the team, too.
Otherwise, if they see you as separate from the team, you have a very weird dynamic that is really hard to dismantle. The us versus them is a very hard dynamic to dismantle. So you want to work very hard as business owners, as leaders, to make sure that dynamic is not put in place. The best way to do that is for your team to see you participating. And it's really hard to participate if you're leading every single session of your team retreat."
Rob:
That's right.
Traci:
So yeah, I think, you guys experiencing that and your team viewing you doing that is priceless.
Rob:
Yeah. Absolutely. Highly recommended. Retreats are a great way, I think, to help remind people that there is people on the other side of those Zooms, right? They're humans. They have other things going on. It's so easy to turn them into just robots.
Traci:
Yeah. And when you feel part of something, you want to stay part of that something. And that's retention.
Rob:
Yep. One of the other tips that we wrote down was, I think, and this is even more true in the last couple years, is really sitting down and reviewing your compensation and your benefit structures. There's been a lot of move in the market depending on what the role is. We've cited some numbers in the past, especially some developer designer salaries have gone up as much as 30% in the market over the last couple years.
Nobody ever wants to talk about the money side of retention, but we have to. We can't ignore it. That is absolutely on people's minds. They are seeing those same studies. If you can find that information, your team can find that information, too.
Traci:
Yeah. And it's actually becoming more and more transparent. You probably see this in the news and see it in the trades that companies are becoming more transparent about pay structures. What you want to do is just review your pay and make sure that it's fair.
I think if you can feel confident in that, that you're paying your people well, that it's fair market value, that all of those things are there, then you can feel confident. I think when you start to put your head in the sand and say, "Ugh, I just really don't want to look at it." Or, "I don't want to do an increase, it's going to hurt our bottom line, our profitability and all of that," then that's when you get in trouble. That's when all of a sudden you're like, "Wait, what? Who's leaving?" And it could have been just as simple as slightly adjusting your pay structure.
You end up paying somewhere. You're either going to pay in having to replace that person, or you're going to have to pay in making sure you have fair pay bands and people are put where they should be within those bands. So yeah, it's a necessary step to take if you want to keep your people.
Rob:
Over the last couple years, our humans team has gone through and done the research on all of our roles, started with good job descriptions, then did all the research. Then we went through the next step and actually shared that research with our team, and said, "This is what we're finding. This is what we're going to base our pay structures on, the research that we found." As well as total comp statements, where, "Here is the total compensation you're receiving, fully loaded costs." All that, so it's all transparent. That's done a lot of good of helping build trust, but also transparency with the team to say, "Hey, this is what the research that we're doing, and here's our source work, here's our citations about what we're finding and how that translates to our pay bands, how that translates to our career ladders. And oh, by the way, everyone fits into those."
Traci:
Yep. I think you're doing exactly what you should, because it's only becoming more transparent. The days of having, "Should we be transparent? Should we not?" Those days are starting to just kind of fade. I think that the market is forcing leaders and business owners into a space now where you're going to have to be as transparent as you possibly can be.
And I think, as leaders, showing your team that you've done the research, that you care, is very important. Because they know even if you can't outbid a huge company like Amazon or Google, in the end, it's fine if they know you care and you're trying and you really understand the bands and you're working within those. I think that for some people, a lot of people, that's enough. That's enough. They don't need some ridiculous... I mean, there's a reason why a lot of big companies are paying what they're paying. That's part of their retention plan in trying to keep people. But some people want more than that. A lot of people want more than that, but they always want to know they're being paid fairly. That is for certain.
Rob:
One of the things, this is brought up, again, among my peers, one of the criticisms is, "Well, what if we tell people like that and they're not happy?" My response is always, "People are writing their own story if you don't give them all the information. I promise the story they're writing is way worse than reality. Clarity is kindness. You're better off telling them what they are, how it works, and being as transparent as possible, because otherwise people will make up some bonkers stuff that is not based on reality at all."
Traci:
That's true. Sadly, human nature does lean towards the negative.
Rob:
Yeah. And the crazy.
Traci:
Yeah, exactly. I think the last tip we had on here was, and I mean, we could give about 15 tips, but we don't want to take all day. But we kind of picked the top ones here, and the last top one we wanted to toss out was communicating recognition.
Rob:
Yes.
Traci:
It's a big one. Recognizing your staff from a structural standpoint, but also organically in the moment. And like we've talked about before, that just takes awareness and intention to wake up every day, and it is literally on your to-do list, to recognize someone, recognize the team as a whole, recognize an individual contributor, but to really not let the day end without seeking out and recognizing the good work that's being done.
Rob:
Yeah. Say, "Thank you." That's what most people want to hear, is, "Thank you." We did a mini-series on this, on the Five Languages of Appreciation a couple months back. Go listen to those. Those still absolutely apply here.
But yeah, that's one of those things that doesn't take that much effort, and it usually doesn't have that much spend associated with it, but it can have a huge impact. And it's contagious, right? People want to be led, and people will model the good leadership that they see. And if you at the top are taking the time to recognize and say, "Thank you," and to show appreciation, you better believe it'll happen up and down your organization.
Traci:
And I think with the rise in remote workers, it hasn't... Humans haven't changed. Humans want to be seen and known. And so recognition is part of that, is part of seeing them and knowing them. So I always encourage my leaders to be unique in your recognition, to actually think about what you're seeing and to name that skill in the person you're recognizing. So instead of just saying, "Hey, thanks, Bob, for getting me that report." Maybe saying, "You know what I really like? Is how you do this when you're putting the report together." Or that, "How you are so cheerful when you give it to me." Or whatever it is that you see in that person that you really appreciate, whether it's how detailed they are, they color code this. You would be surprised when people hear that, they're like, "Oh, he noticed that? She really thinks that about me?"
That is being seen and that is being known. And I think the more as leaders that we can take just that extra added step, that makes it more organic, real, authentic, as opposed to just like a blanket. So stretch yourself a little bit every day in actually seeing your employees, seeing your teammates. Because man, I don't know if there is a better, more lasting retention tool than seeing the people that work for you.
Rob:
Yeah. That's great.
All right. Any parting thoughts here, Traci?
Traci:
This is a big one. It's an important one. But I think every tip we gave today is not difficult. The difficult part is remembering them and doing them, but they're not hard things to do.
Rob:
Yeah. All easily overlooked, all easy too dismiss. But if you're not doing them, the impact will be profound.
Traci:
Yes. So go forth and stretch yourself a little bit today.
Rob:
Yeah. Show up intentionally, and everybody will notice.
Traci:
Exactly.
Rob:
All right. Thanks, Traci.
Traci:
Thank you.
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The Overly Human Podcast is brought to you by Navigate the Journey and Sparkbox. For more information on this podcast, or to get in touch with Traci or Rob, go to overlyhuman.com. If you like what you've heard, subscribe and tell your friends to listen. Thanks.
