Welcome back staff! BowTiedCEO is here to give you some pure alfa on how to keep your best employees, get rid of the week ones, and save yourself a lot of headaches managing the workforce.
Even if you are reading this and you are not a manager, one day you may be. These are tried and true methods of making sure you keep your staff from jumping ship.
1. Offer Flexibility
This is a recent trend that has gained popularity. Remote work, flex time, hybrid office environment. Allow employees the choice to have the opportunity to pick their schedule, when applicable. Obviously, there are jobs where this may not be possible, but if you can, offer it up. Employees are willing to take less pay for remote work.
As an employer, getting better, qualified candidates for less pay is a no brainer. Just deal with the tax issues if they add productivity to your workforce.
Keep in mind the policies your company holds. There are always ways around them. Companies will be tracking your employees moves but it is just information presented to managers. You do not have to act on it if one of your employees only comes in 1 day a week and company policy says 3. Nobody at the top will really care as long as the work gets done.
2. Hold Everyone Accountable
Many managers fail here because they lack backbone or don’t want to be the “bad guy”. Holding people accountable is a basic standard and the bar now is so low. You also have to understand people are going to try and do the bare minimum to not get fired and some people are more efficient than others.
In organizations where you can manage employee productivity with output reporting against KPIs, this is very easy. An example would be how many widgets an employee made, how many calls they made, how many orders filled etc. Measure that against established targets and it becomes pretty clear if they are underperformers.
Back office jobs are much harder to measure because there is very little tangible metrics but if you start with goal setting and monitoring errors, it becomes easier. Establish goals that employees agree with, track that over the course of a certain time period, and report findings on performance.
At the end of the day, that which gets tracked, get measured. That which gets measured gets rewarded.
3. Pay Employees If You Want to Keep Them
Another area where managers fail is paying their staff. Many of them either undervalue their staff or are afraid to go over their budget. Remember it is much harder to find good replacements so always pay the people who do the best work, even if it means other non productive staff leave.
You should also be prepared if someone does leave. I will get to this point later, but if you know what your staff knows and you can do what your staff does, you will never worry about the crappy employees leaving.
The two best ways to do this are with larger year end bonuses and agreeing or negotiating a raise if they prove they deserve one. In order to do either of these you need to have something like this budgeted for before hand (preparation), be willing to reduce other expenses you oversee (scrounge), or explain why you are over budget and stand by why it happened (courage).
I have had to do all three. The first two are easy but the last one (courage) is not so easy for managers without a backbone. Stand up for your good staff when the time comes.
4. Be Transparent with Employees
To be transparent you need to first be able to communicate effectively. Being candid and calm will allow you drive any message you want with your staff, while not agitating them in way that makes them want to leave. The best methods for this are 1v1’s with employees so you can properly align on their individual goals and town halls where employees can have open and candid discussions with you.
For both 1v1’s and town halls, make sure the two way communication is candid and organic. Do not have prepped answers. Employees will know it is fake.
5. Don't Treat Employees Like Servants
I can’t believe this needs to be said, but unfortunately many people would disagree with me. How many stories have you heard of people getting called on Saturday morning at 2AM to do something? It is more common than you think.
Give your employees time away. If you have nothing else to do but work, you need to go do something. Find a hobby, get away, whatever it is, do it for the sake of your staff. They do not want to talk to you as much as you are talking to them.
As a leader, who also need to be able to get your hands dirty and share in the struggles with your staff. It will build better bonds instead of just managing their work. They will have more respect for you.
6. Manage Out the Weak Employees
Terminating an employee can be tedious and costly, so how else can manage them out? Try to encourage them into other opportunities. They may be a good fit somewhere else. Even ask colleagues if they have positions open they these employees can fill. Be careful about this tactic as you do not want to send a bad employee to another ally. Only send them to people who you are not close with.
If it gets to the point where you even have to question them about if they like their job or not, they should be able to have a conversation with you about why their performance is slipping. Getting them to acknowledge their struggles is key. Once they acknowledge this you can either coach them up or help them find another opportunity.
7. Know What Your Employees Know
Aside from the fact that this will build trust and comradery with your team, it also offers two other benefits to managers. Accountability and operations.
If you do not know what your employees do, how can you effectively hold them accountable for their performance? You can’t. They could be poor performers and you wouldn’t even know it and knowing who your weak links are is key.
It also allows you to continue operations if you need to jump in and take control if someone leaves, goes on PTO, etc. If performance of your team starts to decrease your boss WILL NOT CARE. You cannot say “well, we lost a staff member and we don’t have capacity.” Nobody cares. Manage it.
8. Do What Your Employees Do
This goes along with point seven above. It will build trust and comradery. It will allow you to hold them accountable and continue operations when understaffed.
The last benefit? It grows your skillset, especially when managing process where you lack knowledge.
At one point in my career, I inherited the Purchasing and Supply Chain departments of my organization. I knew enough to be dangerous, but not enough to evaluate performance of staff or create more efficient operations. I immediately went to the most seasoned employee and got a crash course of how things were being done so that I could hold people accountable, increase productivity, and gain my own knowledge to benefit my career. Worked out well.
As a side note, do not be afraid to ask for help if you have a gap that needs closed. Even if it is to a subordinate or someone ranked lower than you. When you do this, you should vet it with someone else. You have to also do your own research.
9. Don't Be an Asshole to Your Employees
If your employees perform well, they are helping you maintain your level of employment. They support you so treat them with dignity and respect. Keep boundaries of respect with your staff and they will respect you even more. Here are some things not do in order to treat your employees respectfully.
As a manager, you should be checking out from work. If not for yourself, for your staff. If you are sending out emails at 2AM on a Wednesday, they may feel they need to as well. Explicitly tell them they do not need to do this.
Do not contact them while they are on PTO or vacation
Do not contact them at unreasonable hours of the day (Some nuance here depending on the situation)
Do not berate them in front of people. Always reprimand them privately.
Back them up and defend them. Do not throw them under the bus.
Ask their opinions about the business, even if you do not use what they say. Many times they just want to be heard.
10. Empower Employees
Out of all the things I have mentioned above, this may be the most important. Empowering employees allows them to have what most people want in a job: Autonomy. By empowering them you decrease the feeling that they report to you. Let them make decisions and explore things. Let them make mistakes and listen their opinions.
Most people hate answering to anyone. Empowerment will give them that feeling of autonomy where they get more of a sense that they have control over their job, instead of just being a good soldier who carries out the orders of, what they believe to be idiots.
So do not micromanage them. Do not make them ask you for permission on every detail. It isn’t helping either of you. An empowered employee is a more productive employee.
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