Quits are at an all-time high right now, closing in on 30%. The Society for Human Resource Management suggests that turnover costs on average 6-9 months of an employee’s salary and leads to loss of productivity, recruiting and training new talent challenges, and the loss of co-worker goodwill.
With turnover and the cost of turnover so high, organizations are very focused on building effective engagement and retention strategies. According to the 2021 Indeed Work Happiness Report, employees are looking for more meaningful work that builds a greater sense of belonging and keeps them energized. A recent study from the ADP Research Institute found that only 14% of workers are fully engaged at work. That means that 86% are not. This same study found that a worker is 14 times more likely to be fully engaged if they trust their team leader. That is a huge number. Given the impact of trust in a team leader, and the fact that 57% of workers say they have quit a job because of a bad boss, a focus on leadership training as a retention strategy can have a broad impact.
Not every manager is a natural leader. However, most can improve their leadership skills through education and training. Leadership training should focus on helping leaders and emerging leaders to achieve their personal potential by:
- Developing leadership competencies that engage and inspire others, even in challenging times
- Optimizing interpersonal skills that help them better relate to managers, co-workers, and customers
- Identifying personal blind spots and developing resilience strategies to improve performance
Typical employees don’t like working in isolation. Most want to work in a team. According to the ADP Research study above, workers are 2.6 times more likely to be fully engaged when working as part of a team. However, don’t make the mistake of thinking that physically being in the office automatically helps workers feel like they are part of a team. Remote workers actually tend to be more fully engaged. This was true both pre-COVID and during COVID.
In short, when developing retention strategies, an organization can make a big impact by building more teams and better team leaders.
Additional Content
Recently, John Courtney, CEO of NextJob, presented a webinar related to this subject matter.
501 offers members complimentary reemployment coaching packages, through NextJob, to help your laid-off employees land jobs much more quickly. Contact us for more information on job search packages.
