1571: How to Retain Your Most Promising Employees by Dr. Benjamin Ritter of Live For Yourself Consulting

[00:00:00] This is Optimal Work Daily. How to Retain Your Most Promising Employees by Dr. Benjamin Ritter of LiveForYourselfConsulting.com. Think about one of your most promising employees. This employee probably does more than expected, volunteers to lead and participate on projects, supports and motivates others, and seems to be interested in growing with the organization.

[00:00:23] What would you do if this employee suddenly stopped speaking up in meetings, seemed to become distant from work relationships, and started leaving work earlier than normal? Maybe you would drop hints about how valuable the employee is to the organization and the department, but you don't truly know how to approach the situation. Eventually, as you expected and partially accepted as a given, the employee leaves.

[00:00:47] This short story happens too often in today's work environment. Promising employees excel in an organization only to become stagnant due to the same traits that make them promising employees. And then, due to a lack of intervention, they leave the organization for a new opportunity. As a leader, you may feel at a loss in these types of situations, which isn't a surprise.

[00:01:09] I'd feel confident in saying that most organizations do not train their leaders on a consistent and effective retention and talent management strategy, especially for disengaged, promising employees. This may be partially due to the belief that promising employees will leave to grow in their career. Other jobs pay more, or have better benefits, or offer more growth opportunities. There's not much organizations feel they can do to retain talent other than provide a counteroffer.

[00:01:37] But if that works, you usually are left with a bigger problem, a higher-paid disengaged employee. The stance that promising employees will leave due to outside competition places the blame for turnover on influences that appear out of the control of the leader or organization, and is largely to blame for the widespread lack of accountability and talent management strategies to retain promising employees. When you blame something that isn't within your control, it also becomes something that you don't need to solve.

[00:02:07] This is a conflicting internal message because, as a leader, you usually are held responsible for the rates of turnover in your department. But then, why aren't organizations empowering and training leaders to reduce turnover through factors that they actually can have control over? I mentioned in the article, The Dangers of Searching for Meaningful Work, a letter to employers and employees, that, quote,

[00:02:30] An organization's greatest retention strategy is empowering and educating their employees on taking responsibility for their own levels of happiness at work, end quote. Notice how this focuses on the factors you do have control over as a leader. As a leader, you do not have control over what someone does or outside offers, but you do have control over the work world, the entire internal and external experience that an employee has at work.

[00:02:55] For example, you have control over how you show up as a leader, your presence, attitude, communication skills, support, etc. The work that needs to get done, how the work is done, team management and mediation, the resources your employees have at work, etc. The entire work world can be influenced by you as the leader and lead to more engaging and meaningful experiences for your employees.

[00:03:19] A positive work world of an employee can prevent an employee from seeking outside opportunities and can also be one of the strongest reasons why an employee will turn down a competing offer that is usually mainly focused on external factors. Over the years of working with organizations and individual leaders on increasing job satisfaction and engagement, I've identified that the work world of an employee consists of four major components that are directly within the control of a leader.

[00:03:46] The work world consists of trust, the environment, actual work assignments, and meaning, and they combine to create the team model, T-E-A-M, of managing to motivate. T for trust. Trust is the feeling of safety and support between the employee, yourself, and the organization. What have you done recently to show that you care and trust your employees?

[00:04:11] E. Environment consists of the resources your employees have to do their jobs, the social contacts between coworkers, and interactions with customers. Do your employees have the tools they need to do their work with ease? Have you oriented teams, workspaces, and mediated conflicts with a focus on the social dynamics of the department? Are you aware of consistent customer issues, and have you engaged and empowered your employees to solve those issues?

[00:04:38] A. Assignments are the actual work that employees have to complete. Are you aware of the work your employees are doing, what they enjoy doing, and what they dislike doing? Have you personalized the work needed for your department to fit the preferences of your employees? M. Meaning is the purpose or connection employees feel toward their work. Have you discovered the reasons why your employees work in their jobs and for the organization?

[00:05:05] And do you communicate and reinforce those reasons in conversations with your employees? Have you shared the meaning you feel behind your employees? The team model is focused on providing a simple process for leaders to positively impact the work world of individual employees. It ignores factors outside of a leader's control, and instead engages and empowers each employee to craft a job they can love from a job they have.

[00:05:31] Ultimately, the team model creates a greater level of engagement, job satisfaction, and loyalty from individual employees through providing an individualized work environment focused on retaining employees. How would your style of leadership change if it was focused on the work world of each individual employee? What would you change about your work day to implement the pillars of the team model?

[00:05:54] How would the culture of your organization change if it offered an environment curated for each employee to work in and believed that it was responsible for retaining promising employees? It's important to accept that employees don't often leave an organization because of a competing offer. Employees only found a competing offer because they were ready to leave an organization. Organizations need to adopt the belief that they are responsible for rates of employee retention

[00:06:21] and focus on developing leaders to impact the work world of their employees. An organization and leader that cares about their teams focuses on what they can control, their team. You just listened to the post titled How to Retain Your Most Promising Employees by Dr. Benjamin Ritter of liveforyourselfconsulting.com. And thanks to Dr. Benjamin Ritter for letting us share his work today.

[00:06:49] He has his doctorate in organizational leadership and studied how people learn, how leaders are developed, and how to create a curriculum that would encompass both. From there he created Live for Yourself Consulting along with some programs you can check out. You can schedule a call right on his site. And he also has a podcast which is called the Live for Yourself Revolution Podcast, which highlights the stories of intrapreneurs and entrepreneurs that are truly living for themselves. And you can find that show wherever you get your audio.

[00:07:19] So again, come by liveforyourselfconsulting.com for a lot more and thanks again to Dr. Benjamin. But I think that does it for today and I thank you so much for being a subscriber to the show. Hope you're having a great weekend and I'll see you back here tomorrow for the Sunday show where your optimal life awaits. And we'll see you in the next episodes. Welcome to the anchor page. You may expect to take a walk. Hope you're gonna be in the next episodes. This episode is very easy.