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How’s Your Return on People?

March 28, 2020 8:03 pm / Leave a comment

by Laurie Bassi and  Daniel McMurrer

Managers are always claiming, “People are our most important asset.” But deep down, they can’t shake the feeling that employees are costs. Big costs. And they treat them that way. Quarterly earnings off? Cut the perks, rein in training, and downsize. This strategy may increase earnings in the short term, but it’s myopic. Recent studies suggest that layoffs actually destroy shareholder value. And our research shows that treating employees like the assets they are—by investing in their development—boosts returns over the long term.

For years now, our research has measured the effect of spending on employee education and training—a “cost” that is buried in general and administrative expenses—on the stock prices of 575 publicly traded firms. We created four hypothetical portfolios (one each for years 1997 through 2000) consisting of between 20 and 40 companies that invested at roughly twice the industry norm in employee development in each of the previous years (1996 through 1999). We followed the performance of these portfolios through 2001. Their returns were robust and in line with a growing body of empirical research showing that organizations that make extraordinary investments in people often enjoy extraordinary performance on a variety of indicators, including shareholder return.

In December 2001, we decided to put our money where our research was and created a live portfolio of companies that spend aggressively on employee development. In its first 25 months since inception, that portfolio has outperformed the S&P 500 index by 4.6 percentage points (2.2% versus a decline of 2.4% for the index). In January 2003, we expanded our investment strategy by launching two additional live equity portfolios made up of similar development-oriented companies. The results speak for themselves. While past performance is never a guarantee of future results, and while it is always possible to lose money, each of these three portfolios outperformed the S&P 500 by 17% to 35% in 2003. (See the exhibit “The People Payoff.”)

 

The People Payoff

How are you investing in your most important asset?

 

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6 Ways That Emerging Technology Is Disrupting Business Strategy

February 26, 2020 10:11 am / Leave a comment

10 Feb 2020|by Danielle Kost

Even though the internet has been publicly available for almost three decades, executives at just about every company are wrestling with how to use digital technology to advance their business strategy.

We asked professors from Harvard Business School’s Strategy Unit how emerging technologies involving artificial intelligence (AI), data analytics, and the Internet of Things are changing the way business leaders think about strategy. Here’s what they said:

1. Talent and data are more critical than ever

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“Traditionally, companies focused on technology they own and have exclusive rights to use as a critical driver of competitive advantage. However, increasingly cutting-edge technology is developed as a shared resource where the core technology is freely available to anyone who wants to use it and it is frequently released as open source software.

Therefore, instead of the technology itself, companies are considering their user data and their tech employees as the primary drivers of competitive advantage.”

Frank Nagle (@frank_nagle), an assistant professor who is also affiliated with the HBS Digital Initiative, the Managing the Future of Work Project, and the Laboratory for Innovation Science.

2. Technology is propelling business transformation

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“While some firms think about technology merely as a different type of capital investment that does not impact their way of doing things, others are adopting new technologies as they make significant changes to the customers they serve, the skills they employ, and their organizational structures. The latter approach involves higher costs and time horizons, but most likely also much higher returns.”

Raffaella Sadun (@raffasadun), a professor of business administration and a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

3. Algorithms are changing the pricing game

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“Firms are increasingly using pricing algorithms to set prices, especially in online markets. Pricing algorithms can enable better-targeted prices, but they also can fundamentally alter how a firm competes.

A firm that adopts a pricing algorithm can change the nature of price competition in its market and change the focal set of rivals. In addition, adopting a pricing algorithm may change the direction of a firm, requiring additional investments in IT, modified production decisions, and different personnel, among other changes.”

Alexander J. MacKay, an assistant professor of business administration who studies the economics of competition.

4. Platforms are upending traditional business models

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“Emerging technologies of all types and forms are helping companies exploit new business models. Classic competitive strategy (as its name suggests) has focused more on value capture and competition within existing business models, and yet the most valuable companies in the US today simply did not exist 30 years ago. The technology they exploit creates enormous value for customers through the novelty of the ‘job to be done’ and by monetizing their offerings in very different ways.

The fact that many of these digital firms are based on a ‘platform’ business model—a term that only applied to railroads a few decades ago—only goes to show how far the new technologies have transformed the strategy landscape.”

David J. Collis, adjunct professor and author of International Strategy: Context, Concepts and Implications.

5. Companies can test everything

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“Firms can now rapidly and cheaply experiment with crucial competitive decisions like pricing, product positioning, and which markets to serve. Historically, these decisions relied on master plans and involved time horizons measured in decades. Now, online platforms, algorithms, and ubiquitous data allow firms to test these decisions quickly, sometimes in a matter of months or weeks.

Recent work (pdf) by myself and colleagues at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business suggests these ‘experimental strategies’ improve performance in new ventures, but questions, such as whether experiments bias firms toward easy-to-test and measure ideas and markets, remain.”

Rembrand M. Koning (@orgRem), an assistant professor of business administration who studies experimentation, A/B testing, and agile strategies.

6. Cloud computing is lowering barriers to entry

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“Competition will intensify in many digitally enabled industries as the cloud makes it ever easier for competitors to enter a market, which we’ve seen with Disney and HBO streaming to compete with Netflix. The major cloud providers will themselves inevitably compete with and threaten their own customers and partners as they expand their offerings.

As companies incur increasingly massive cloud usage costs that threaten their own profitability, they should make sure they do not get locked in with one cloud provider. Using multiple cloud providers ensures that they can always switch to the lowest cost option.”

Andy Wu (@AndyWuAndyWu), an assistant professor who studies how technology entrepreneurs use resources to expand their businesses.

How to Turn Down the Boil on Group Conflict

February 12, 2020 8:26 am / Leave a comment

12 Dec 2019|by Michael Blanding

Intergroup conflict can grind office productivity to a halt. Jeffrey Lees discusses how understanding psychological stereotypes can help divided parties compromise.

Even as polarized political discussion appears to have frozen the possibility of compromise, new research suggests that divided sides can come together on many issues to make decisions.

“Our research finds that inaccurate beliefs really drive behavior and contribute to intergroup conflict,” says Jeffrey Lees, a doctoral candidate in Organizational Behavior and Psychology at Harvard Business School.

In actuality, most people have a wildly inflated sense of just how negative the other side feels, according to a new paper that Lees co-wrote with Harvard University Associate Professor of Psychology Mina Cikara. “If you forecast that no matter what you propose, the other side will hate it, then you are going to say compromise is a waste of time,” Lees says.

“People not only have stereotypes of what other people are like, they also have stereotypes of what other people believe.”

The paper, Inaccurate Group Meta-Perceptions Drive Negative Out-Group Attributions in Competitive Contexts, was published in November 2019 in the journal Nature Human Behavior.

We want to compromise

In a series of experiments, Lees and Cikara found people are much more willing to compromise, but resist trying because they think those on the other side—and even those within their own group—will resist going along. But they also unearthed good news on how mistrust can be overcome on many issues.

Lees first started considering these dynamics in a business context. “I was thinking about how people inside organizations predict how people outside of the organization perceive it, and how they might get that judgment wrong,” Lees says. “It didn’t take me long to realize how that sort of judgment applies in other contexts.”

He teamed up with Cikara, whose lab has looked at how people’s perceptions of others changed based on whether they think of them as individuals or groups. “How we attribute motives to other people becomes distorted when we stop thinking of them as individuals and instead move to a framework of ‘us versus them,’” Cikara says.

In a political context, that can quickly lead to conflict.

“People not only have stereotypes of what other people are like, they also have stereotypes of what other people believe,” Cikara says. “‘They hate us for our freedom,’ or ‘they think we’re liberal snowflakes,’ or ‘they’re doing that to be obstructive,’ or ‘they want to ruin our American way of life.’ But when you actually talk to people about their opinions, almost nobody actually talks like that.”

Lees’ and Cikara’s experiments found most people are much less negative than the stereotypes we harbor about the other group. For each experiment, the researchers presented real-world scenarios that advantaged one side or the other, and then asked participants to predict how negatively the other side would react.

For example, one scenario presented to participants who identified as Democrat, explained that Democrats in a state legislature were considering a change to committees that draw voting lines. While currently, committee members were appointed by the governor, a Republican, the new proposal would allow equal representation by both parties.

They then asked participants to predict on a 100-point scale how much Republicans would dislike or oppose the measure or consider it politically unacceptable. Responses averaged in the 80s, with the largest clump at 100.

As negative as possible

“The forecasts were pretty much as negative as possible,” Lees says. In reality, however, the real responses were closer to 50—showing that participants overrated how badly the other side would feel.

Lees and Cikara found similar results for other scenarios, involving changes to selection of judges, campaign financing, and renaming of a state highway. (The researchers purposefully stayed away from “hot button” issues such as gun control and abortion, which might spur too much passion.)

The results were consistent for both Democrats and Republicans, or even if they just presented an anonymous “Party A” and “Party B.”

“They are totally insensitive to the scope or impact of the issue,” Cikara says. “They just think the other side is going to be upset about anything.”

Even more interesting, people made the same forecasts about others in their own group, believing their fellow Democrats or fellow Republicans were angrier about a measure, even when they themselves were only mildly opposed.

Having such polarized views of both political parties naturally leads to less willingness to negotiate and compromise, Lees says.

“If you are a legislator, you are thinking no one across the aisle or in my own tribe will support compromise, but that’s in fact wrong. Both sides might be okay with compromise, but no one’s willing to propose it because of inaccurate forecasts.”

Overcoming bias to reach cooperation

The news from their experiments wasn’t all bad. When the researchers flipped the script to create scenarios that were cooperative, study participants were much more accurate in their predictions. For example, in the voting districts scenario, the researchers told participants that it was Democrats who were proposing the change to make the commission fairer, even though a Democrat was currently in the governor’s office and stood to lose advantage through the change.

In that case, Democrats and Republicans alike accurately predicted how both sides would feel.

“Suddenly, people’s forecasts become accurate, which is quite an optimistic finding for cooperation,” Lees says. “If you can actually engender cooperation, people are much more likely to have accurate perceptions that might drive reconciliatory behavior.”

In a final experiment, Lees and Cikara showed that people could change their perceptions when confronted with new information. After making their own predictions about the negativity of the other side, participants were shown their true level of opposition—on average, much lower than they’d assumed. Afterwards, people decreased the degree to which they thought the other side was engaging in purposeful obstructionism.

“How we attribute motives to other people becomes distorted when we stop thinking of them as individuals and instead move to a framework of ‘us versus them.’”

“There’s a lot written about how people are totally insensitive to the truth when told that their beliefs are wrong,” Lees says. “This suggests that’s not the case. People are willing to update their beliefs when they are simply told they are inaccurate.”

Better business outcomes

This finding, which indicates the potential for creating cooperation, carries implications for business as well.

“In the context of teams or negotiations, adopting a competitive mindset can lead to undue pessimism about how others feel,” Lees says. “These inaccurate beliefs can lead to missed business opportunities. But if those contexts are reframed as cooperative, accurately forecasting how someone across the negotiation table might respond to a particular proposal becomes easier.”

That’s good news in a society that often seems to be grappling with intractable partisanship on every issue. While some issues may still present a gulf too wide to bridge, the study shows that there is at least some room for compromise and mutual understanding between the parties, if they can just start talking to each other.

“When you’re not talking about hot-button issues, you shouldn’t be afraid to broach the topic with people who have a different position than you,” Cikara says, “because it turns out you most likely have an inaccurate perception about what they think—and they have the same of you. All it takes is one person to break the cycle.”

About the Author

Michael Blanding is a writer based in the Boston area.

Establishing and Sustaining a High Performance Culture: Article #2, The Mechanics of How High Performance Cultures Work

February 25, 2019 2:59 pm / Leave a comment

In our last article, Establishing and Sustaining a High Performance Culture, we defined what a high performance culture is and described its four key organizational functions. This article is intended to be more pragmatic in that it will outline the mechanics of cultivating a winning culture.

Before we get into the mechanics, lets talk about the real benefits senior leaders realize by focusing on culture. We will look at these benefits through the lens of a real world example – ANZ Bank. The Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited, commonly called ANZ, is the third largest bank by market capitalization in Australia and also the largest bank in New Zealand. In 2008, for the second year in a row, ANZ was named the most sustainable bank globally by the Dow Jones Sustainability Index. They attribute their success in the last decade to their focus on culture. In 2003, the bank implemented an initiative they described as a “unique plan of eschewing traditional growth strategies and recasting the culture of the bank to lift efficiency and earnings.” Their results were significant:

  • In two years, the share of employees having the sense that ANZ “lived its values” went from 20 to 80 percent
  • The share seeing “productivity in meetings” went from 61 to 91 percent
  • Revenue per employee increased 89 percent
  • The bank overtook its peers in total returns to shareholders and customer satisfaction

Ten years later, ANZ has sustained its results. Its profit after tax has grown at a cumulative average growth rate of 15 percent, putting it well ahead of its industry. It announced a statutory profit after tax for the half year ended 31 March 2018 of $3.32 billion up 14% and a cash profit on a continuing basis of $3.49 billion up 4% on the prior comparable period.

ANZ Chief Executive Officer Shayne Elliott attributes most, if not all if their success to its corporate culture. In their half year results of 2018 he reported, “We are now benefiting from a more focused organization with sector-leading capital and improving returns. The progress of our multi-year transformation demonstrates we have the right team in place to manage difficult conditions and deliver for our customers and our shareholders.”

Organizational Culture and Leadership

Culture and Leadership

The model illustrated above is the traditional way of viewing how organizational cultures influence the day-to-day environment in which managers and senior leaders operate. It depicts how the collective values, beliefs, norms and customs of the organization determine how decisions are made. Decisions lead to actions. Actions lead to results. The results reinforce the values, beliefs, norms and customs of the culture. In this article, I am going to propose a counter argument regarding organizational cultures that will be a departure from this model. Not only will it challenge the efficacy of the model depicted above, but it may also challenge any predisposition about business cultures you have been educated to adopt. However…after considering its potential value, you will find the proposition at least interesting enough to ponder or test.

We all know how it goes…at the beginning of the fiscal year, senior leaders convene off-site meetings. Along with producing a corporate strategy and a compliment of initiatives, senior leaders often create a set of corporate beliefs and values. They invest a significant amount of thought and time to define and communicate the meaning of these value statements. The hope is that the values will become a code of conduct by which the workforce can operate whenever they are faced with a unique circumstance or an absence of a defined policy. If the workforce operates by the values, they can consider their conduct to be in the company’s interest thereby making them good corporate citizens. This, my friends and colleagues, is a fallacy! Moreover….the posters, speeches and business workshops built around this model not only creates an illusion of corporate culture, but also explains why the expression, “Culture eats strategy for lunch,” is valid.

Organizational Culture: Which comes first the chicken or the egg?

In reality organizational culture resides in how leaders and managers make decisions and take actions. Whether their decision models are used to address corporate politics, problem-solving or improving performance; organizational culture resides in the nature of the decisions leadership makes and actions they take. For example, if leadership values a culture of collaboration but their decisions are made 1. without seeking the pooled knowledge and creativity of a team, or 2. by kicking them upstairs to be made by a select group of senior leaders, then consensus and collaboration are killed in their infancy. If, on the other hand, the senior leaders value managing-by-fact and they use a series of metrics and scorecards to analyze shifts, trends and changes in key performance indicators, then a culture of data-based decision making can thrive.

In conclusion: proposed beliefs, values, norms and customs don’t feed decision and actions. Quite the contrary. The way we make decisions, the decisions we make, the actions we take and the results we achieve, produce and sustain our business cultures.

When TPMG first began training and coaching senior leaders on high performance cultures ten years ago, this theory was met with some skepticism. But….through exhaustive experimentation and analysis, we have found the theory to hold true. We welcome any and all comments.

Whats Next?

Next in this series is The Role of Senior Leadership in Establishing a High Performance Culture.

If you would like the series delivered directly to you, feel free to contact us by clicking here!

Gerald Taylor is the Managing Director of TPMG’s Strategy and Operations Advisory Practice. His expertise includes coaching and advising senior leaders, strategy and performance improvement.

Jack Welch on Hiring Talented People

August 1, 2018 10:00 am / Leave a comment

Change Management and the Workforce

June 19, 2018 12:03 pm / Leave a comment

Gerald Taylor – Managing Director

TPMG Consulting

The purpose of this article is to provide insight relating to the topic of organizational change. It is our hope that it provides you a perspective you can use to stimulate creative thought and support your change management activities.

I have drafted 6 important questions that relate to change management. This article provides concise answers based on sound primary and secondary research. The questions and responses are as follows:

  1. What is change in the business context?
  2. What is the most important thing to know about change and employees?
  3. Why do employees fear or resist change?
  4. How does a change agent overcome resistance to change?
  5. Why do employees remain with companies?
  6. What can companies do today to satisfy and retain quality employees?

The body of this article will provide analysis and conclusions from prevailing management literature and from TPMG’s Research Group. Should you have any additional questions, feel free to contact me directly at info@helpingmakeithappen.com.

CHANGE IN THE BUSINESS CONTEXT

What is change in the business context? A business context is the strategy, structure, procedures, technology, systems, and objectives employees function within.  Organizational change involves altering or transforming the business context or significant portions of the business context from its present state to some future condition. Appropriate drivers of change to the business context include:

  • Changes in Strategy: Shifts in direction and resources toward new business or market opportunities.
  • Changes in Technology: Advances in internal operations for the sole purpose of improving cost, quality or operational productivity.
  • Changes in Structure: Improvements in the hierarchy to improve the speed, quality and efficacy of decisions and actions.
  • Changes in Culture: Counter measures undertaken to rid negative attitudes or behaviors that serve no useful purpose.

What ever the change, it can be likened to a rock being tossed into still waters. Change can cause ripple effects throughout an organization, often with unintended consequences.

THE SIGNIFICANT THING TO KNOW ABOUT CHANGE AND EMPLOYEES

What is the most important thing to know about change and employees?  Change to the business context is disruptive and produces stress for employees. The introduction of new ways of performing a task can produce intellectual and emotional strain. New technology or procedures establish new learning curves for employees.  Changes to the business context can also introduce new relationships into the work environment. When this occurs, storming and interpersonal conflicts between employees create sources of stress.  Regardless of the reasons or the intensity of a change, the impact of the change causes stress. . A common reaction to organizational change is resistance from those whose jobs may be directly impacted.   Management must be certain that the benefits of the change are worth the cost of the tension placed on the employee.

FEAR AND RESISTANCE TO CHANGE

Why do employees fear or resist change? Employees fear and resist change simply because they will be asked to do something new. This is even more true for older, more experienced employees.  These veterans of the workforce can resist change because they are more intellectually and emotionally invested in the current context to accommodate a change. Younger employees, however, may be more comfortable doing their job with a new twist.

Change for middle managers and supervisors can cause a loss of power or diminished influence in their sphere of responsibility – so they will resist. Additional reasons for fear and resistance to change are illustrated in the force field analysis in figure 1.0.

Figure 1.0 Change management

OVERCOMING RESISTANCE TO CHANGE

How does a change agent overcome resistance to change?  The first step in successfully implementing a change to the business context is communicating a solid and compelling business reason for the change.   Management must be certain that the need to change is greater than the need to stay the same.  Employees need to know that the change is either provoked by a threat to the business or by an added value that will simplify their daily efforts.  If employees perceive a change will be worth the effort, they can be persuaded to “do the right thing.”  Before introducing a change to the business context, management must be prepared to ask and respond to tough questions.  They must ask themselves:

  • What is the reason for the current policy, procedure or system we want to change?
  • What will happen if the current policy, procedure or system is changed or eliminated?
  • How do we minimize the risk of doing away with the old and installing the new one?
  • What is the link between what we are proposing and the company’s strategy?
  • How can I address the concerns of those attached to the old way of doing things?

It is imperative that management not only have a solid business reason, but also a solid moral argument for change.  For example, a utility company often uses their field service technicians, who typically perform sophisticated maintenance work, to perform low skilled tasks because it provides the service techs with a break from the hard work of the day.  The company’s senior management team decided to create a lower skilled, lower paid job category to specialize in performing the lower skilled duties.  This change was preceded by a pilot study which found matching higher skilled work with higher skilled employees and lower skilled work with lower skilled employees increased the overall service order productivity 60% while reducing operational cost by more than 35%.  Senior management’s business reason was solid.  Their moral argument was articulated in terms of the employees’ long term financial needs.  Senior management argued that this improvement in productivity would save the company more than 1 million dollars a year.  These savings, over time, will increase the value of the company and thus each employees’ investment in company stock.  They conveyed that the long term value of the company and financial security of employees was greater than the need for some employees need to “take a break” during the day.

Additional prescriptions for overcoming resistance to change include:

  1. Demonstrate Leadership:  Employees respect strong, smart and effective leadership.   The leaders should create, in the mind of the affected group, a tangible picture of the future state of the business context and the reasons why.
  2. Create options for those adversely affected by the change: A workforce trusts a management team who looks out for their employees.  If management takes care of their people, their people will take care of them.
  3. Over Communicate:  Employees respond effectively when they know what, why and how they will participate in the change. Communicate, in as many modes as possible, the true need and the logic behind the change.  Over communicate!
  4. Move slow, as much as time permits:  Employees who do not feel out of balance when change comes will be better positioned to help facilitate the change.

Think about when cities construct stop lights in new intersections.  They first erect the post.  Four weeks later they connect the stop lights (non working).  Weeks later they turn on the lights, but blinking, to serve as caution lights.  Then weeks later, they make the stop lights functional.

  1. Provide Resources:  Ample resources are of particular importance if the change involves moving to a more sophisticated system.  Management can head off much resistance by committing enough resources to train people to use new technology.
  2. Manage the change:  Employees trust and respect a management team that can create and professionally execute a change plan.

A final strategy for implementing change, we recommend only as a last resort.  Mandate compliance to the change.  Such a coercive action often happens when change must come quickly or when change is undesirable to the affected group.  Pressing or forcing change can increase resistance to change, making the manager or change agent’s job more difficult.  Managers and change agents sometimes have no choice but to force change onto an affected group.

RETAINING A SATISFIED WORKFORCE

Why do employees remain with companies?  Retaining a hardworking, motivated workforce is not a difficult matter.  As a manager, one merely needs to understand the sources of employee dissatisfaction, the sources of satisfaction and respond accordingly.

To that end, a company can be guided by theory.  In the 1950’s, Frederick Herzberg proposed the most relevant theory of employee motivation – Herzberg’s Two Factor Theory of Motivation.  His theory implied that a satisfied employee is motivated from within to work harder and a dissatisfied employee is not self-motivated4.  Herzberg’s research uncovered two classes of factors associated motivation – employee satisfaction and dissatisfaction.  These factors are outlined in table 1.0.

Table 1.0 Herzberg’s Two Factor Theory of Motivation

Dissatisfiers:

Factors Mentioned Most Often by Dissatisfied Employees

 Satisfiers:

Factors Mentioned Most Often by Satisfied Employees
1.   Company policy and administration 1.  Achievement
2.   Supervision 2.  Recognition
3.   Relationship with supervisor 3.  Work itself
4.   Work Conditions 4.  Responsibility
5.   Salary 5.  Advancement
6.   Relationship with peers 6.  Growth
7.   Personal life
8.   Relationship with subordinates
9.   Status
10. Security

Herzberg developed a list of dissatisfiers by asking a sample of 200 employees to describe job situations in which made them feel exceptionally bad.  Herzberg’s research revealed dissatisfaction tended to be associated with complaints about the job context.  He then asked the same sample of 200 employees to describe job situations in which made them feel exceptionally good about their jobs.  His survey concluded that satisfaction tended to be focused on the nature of the job itself.  The responders articulated that the opportunity to experience achievement, receive recognition, work on an interesting job, take responsibility and experience advancement and growth was at the top of their list.

What Herzberg concluded in the 1950s still has relevance today.  By insisting that satisfaction is not the opposite of dissatisfaction, he encouraged managers to think carefully about what actually motivates employees.  The implications are simple to understand.  By providing competitive pay, good working conditions, and the like, a company can, at best, eliminate dissatisfaction.  A workforce requires interesting, meaningful, and satisfying work to be motivated.

Unfortunately, many corporations and executives see things differently.  A job factor survey from 1993 asked a sample of employees to rank certain facets of their job in order of importance.  The survey then asks the same of a sample of managers and executives.  The results are listed in table 2.0.

Table 2.0 Contrast of Employee and Manager Ranking of Work Factors

Factor Employee Rating Manager Rating
Interesting Work

1

5
Appreciation

2

8
Involvement

3

10
Job Security

4

2
Good Pay

5

1
Promotion/Growth

6

3
Good Working Conditions

7

4
Loyalty to Employees

8

7
Help with Personal Problems

9

9
Tactful Discipline

10

6

This study published the Advanced Management Journal found if managers hope to be successful at motivating their employees, they must align their actions closer to those factors that their employees think are important.

What can companies do today to satisfy and retain quality employees?  One of the most altering decisions an employee can make is to change companies.  If companies lose good employees, 9 times out of 10, they deserve it.

Companies should first do their best to eliminate all sources of dissatisfaction:

  1. Employees will stay with a leadership team they can trust.  Supervise employees fairly and nurture good relations between managers and their employees.
  2. Employees will stay with a leadership team they respect.  Manage and administer the company’s policies, procedures and resources with professionalism.
  3. Most employees will put forth a good faith effort if they are being paid fairly for the value of their effort. Pay competitive wages and compensation.
  4. Provide life time employment.  If employees don’t have to worry about their future with the company, they can concentrate on becoming more competent and productive.
  5. Provide an environment that is safe and an environment that has the resources for employees to get their job done well.

These steps should go a long way toward eliminating dissatisfaction.

In order to encourage job satisfaction and employee retention, companies should do their best to provide the following:

  1. Provide work that has identity in the workplace and significance to the value chain.  Jobs which directly relate to generating profits, (i.e., customer service, field services, billing, collections) are all value creation jobs with identity and significance to the financial health of the company.
  2. Seek advice and council from employees regarding changes.  Management may learn hidden details of the business, and employees feel important and appreciated for their input.
  3. Provide employees with feedback about their performance.  Employees want to know that they are making a contribution to the success of the business.

Provide training and employee development.  If employees believe a company is interested in their future success they will be interested in the future success of the company.

 

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