Minding the staff
What’s on your employees’ minds? If you don’t know, you might risk losing the best of them, warns Felicity Landon
Let’s start with some basic assumptions, says Leo Smyth, a partner in PricewaterhouseCoopers’ private company services. You hire smart, motivated, honest people – and you really would like to hold on to them. But that raises a question: whether they are highly skilled and productive forklift truck drivers or commercially savvy executives, what is the best way to treat them and, thus, keep them?
In a recessionary world, we are told that those who are in employment are hanging determinedly to their jobs. But that concept is dismissed by Vancouver-based Mr Smyth, who says: “Is retention important in the downturn? I would say absolutely, because whether you are dealing with the labour workforce or the executive workforce, you want to keep the right people, and there are still other opportunities to offer temptation.”
However, he says, if you are worrying about staff retention in itself, then perhaps you have already left things too late.
“If you have a staff retention issue, it is symptomatic of a bigger issue,” he says. “Just dealing with retention is like putting a band aid on a problem that is much deeper. If you are doing the right things from the staff engagement point of view, then retention isn’t going to be a big issue – because you are going to retain the right people by definition – they will be engaged, motivated and focused.”
Retention, he adds, isn’t necessarily a function of economics. While pay has to be fair, most research shows that the exact level of pay is usually fourth, fifth or sixth on the list in terms of what is most important for employees.
“What’s the best way to treat your people? Give them the information and the tools they need. Let them know and understand what their role is. They want to know they are having a positive impact on the organisation – and they want to know where they fit into that organisation.
“If a forklift driver doesn’t understand how he helps the terminal deliver customer service or operate profitably, he is less likely to be bothered about driving those spikes through a box or wrecking the machinery by not driving carefully. He will behave in a far more positive way if he feels part of the organisation.”
Leo Smyth and his colleague Paul Keelan, an HR specialist and senior consultant with PwC, have both visited plants where the owner walks through and knows the people on the floor by name. It’s simple, but it makes people feel valued.
“If you dumb people down and put them in a corner and ask them to do A, B and C and they don’t understand where A, B and C fits in, you are not going to get any value out of them – and they are not going to feel they are making a contribution.
“It doesn’t mean the CEO has to talk through your area every day, but in a lot of organisations there is that level of communication – and it is amazing the impact it has.”
According to Mr Smyth, some of the most successful port terminals are sharing KPIs with their staff. The dock workers who see damage, productivity and turnover statistics understand what they need to do better.
A lot of companies are taking steps to find out what is on their employees’ minds, what things are important to them and what could motivate them – from childcare support to flexible working hours, from health care benefits to job-sharing. But what’s essential, says Mr Keelan, is “having that dialogue”.
You could get the HR department to roll out a shiny new staff engagement plan, but if you haven’t listened to your employees, it might well be useless. “Trust and culture and good communication at the top will work its way down but if it isn’t there, all the programmes in the world will be wasted,” says Mr Smyth.
“What is the point in putting in flexible working arrangements if that isn’t really what people are interested in?” says Mr Keelan. But he warns: “If you do start asking questions, you’d better be prepared to take action.”
Finally, we come to the finances. The benefits of having a motivated workforce cannot be over-emphasised, says PwC.
“It doesn’t matter if you have the very best machinery in the world – if you don’t have the right people driving the machinery or organising the logistics, your customers will notice and you are going nowhere,” says Mr Keelan. “But a positive culture permeates through to the customers and that becomes a competitive advantage.”
Images for this article - click to enlarge
Unless otherwise stated, all images copyright © Mercator Media 2012. This does not exclude the owner's assertion of copyright over the material.
