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Retention is a leadership issue! What’s at stake?

From Silicon Valley North Tuesday, April 24, 2001

By Janice Calnan

Drawn by challenge and creative opportunities, employees move from company to company. However, research indicates that higher salaries that rob companies of their human talent have less success when employees perceived themselves valued and that the real competitive advantage lies in retaining the people they already have. Management skills are key.

In April, I delivered a seminar on retention to high-tech executives, engineers, operations managers, technical and scientific experts. We looked at why top talent leaves, corporate beliefs that fuel the situation, managing a turnaround and related costs.

One participant captured the situation.

“We recruit and recruit and our employees leave, and they leave and they leave. If we take the people out of our companies there is no organization left. We’re always after new recruits. How do we keep the ones that we have? How do we stop the drain?” Attrition is the symptom. How people are managed is the problem.

Throwing money, benefits, stock options etc. at the situation helps for a while. In the long run people want opportunities to make their mark, and recognition for the work that they do. The manager makes this happen.

The path to success for a technical expert is through a management role.

Managers must deal with conflict, manage agreement, surface resistance, minimize perceived favouritism and grow their people; all of this requires an understanding of how people think and how they learn. The Montreal Gazette reprinted an article “Why do so many managers fail?” in January 1998. The article noted that 82 per cent do not build adequate partnerships with their own people, 58 per cent deal with unclear expectations from higher management and 50 per cent do not have enough political savvy. Managers require great interpersonal skills; otherwise people and projects are at risk.

My premise is this. You can’t throw money at people indefinitely. Employees are dealing with overwork, unclear directives from management above, the pace of company growth, downsizing and the stress of balancing work and life. Employees operating at 200 per cent, have only 100 per cent to give. The cost of salaries alone is huge, let alone the opportunity cost lost. One engineering group of 50 estimated the cost of operating at a 30 per cent employee efficiency loss to be in the neighbourhood of seven and a half million dollars. Finely tuned interpersonal skills at all management levels save the company money.

I recall a professor from the Executive MBA program at Queens University challenging a large group of engineers.

He asked, “Where do technical mangers, (especially engineers) learn to manage people?” Then he pressed the point. “If I take a summer course in engineering, am I an engineer? Can I learn engineering on the job?” The crowd laughed. “Perhaps the reverse is amusing,” he said. “Management is a science, yet many managers learn to manage people on the job. What’s wrong with this picture?”

A fundamental change in the culture is needed, one where partnering with employees about how to make projects happen is the norm. To manage a turnaround and shift the thinking in this culture, here is what I suggest:

You are the leader so start with you. Acknowledge when you don’t know the answers. Identify factors that contribute to the real source of people problems. This means challenging the individual and the corporate beliefs that keep situations the same. Stop discrediting anything without numerical proof. Recognize the dependency on quantitative measurement and expand them to include qualitative measurements. Uncover financial implications associated with managing in traditional ways. Examine the real costs on production, quality and the bottom line when employees and managers alike are discouraged, apathetic, overworked, resentful and preoccupied with fear of loss.

Acknowledge what’s working. Start with valuing your people. Use verbal forms of praise directly to those who make a difference. Your role as the leader is to create a work environment where people can shine. Ask employees at all levels what they want. Don’t assume that you know. Help them to be the best they can be.

Ask for what you want and need. Develop new leadership skills – introspection, intuition, compassion, flexibility, declaration and the ability to have a vision. Learn to partner with your people. Push forward to build a more effective team and stronger culture. Remember that systems can’t see themselves. Use internal and external change agents to develop a larger vision.

If you’re the leader, it starts with you. Notice tiny changes first inside yourself. Shift your thinking from negative to positive. Ask for feedback from your peers, your leader and your team. The real courage begins inside, the courage to look at you.

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