“We just can’t get good people”
Almost every leadership conversation I’ve had in 2022 has mentioned it.
Amidst all the significant challenges facing leaders – the rising costs of finance, disruption of the energy market, supply chain constraints, COVID-related workforce absences, and many more beyond – the most common response I’ve heard from leaders when asked about their biggest challenge… the war for talent.
Of course, staff shortages have been exacerbated by many things. Employees genuinely wanting to shake up their careers after two years of stagnation in lockdown. The slowing of international candidates in the market due to the slow processing of skilled migration visas. The early retirements of an ageing workforce. Burnout of those who carried the burden of pandemic fatigue.
As the labour market remains tight (our 3.5% unemployment rate is Australia’s lowest for 48 years) it’s become critical for leaders to pre-emptively focus on keeping as many of their star performers as they can – for as long as they can.
Retaining your best team members is critical at a time of tight labour supply. The cost of turnover and the long delays in replacing people mean that retention takes an even higher priority.
How do you retain your staff?
Like many challenges of leadership, there is no one right response. My clients are telling me they are using a range of tactics in response to the war for talent.
1. Listen to your team
It’s self-evident that to solve a problem, you need to know the cause. As a leader, you could take a guess at what’s likely to drive them away to new employers, or you could simply ask your team.
We know that one of the biggest reasons for staff leaving a role is dissatisfaction with their immediate supervisor. To retain your staff, put them at the centre of your retention plan. Talk to them; ask them what they love, loathe and want to change about their workplace.
What parts of their role do they find enjoyable, challenging and rewarding? What changes would they like to be part of to make things more productive, innovative or competitive?
By upping your level of employee engagement, bringing an open mind, and truly listening to your team, you demonstrate an accessibility and authenticity that is crucial for trust and loyalty in work teams.
Ultimately people want to feel that their voices are heard and that they have an influence on the future for themselves, their team and the organisation they work for.
2. Invest in them
Nobody wants to feel that their career is stagnating and that there is no prospect of growth. Whilst it’s true that some people don’t always wish for promotion to more senior roles, equally they may not want to be trapped with the same tasks forever.
Invest in your people. Invest in their careers. Help your staff grow and develop. That can be anything from giving them study leave to complete some units of a post-graduate course, paying for a leadership development program, or helping them identify a career mentor.
Show them that you are finding ways to help them grow and develop beyond their current role. Look for opportunities for them to act in more senior roles and be a champion of promoting from within. If staff can see career paths emerging for them in their own organisation, they are more likely to stay.
It’s crucial of course to match the training and development options to the individual.
Customised and bespoke is better than one size fits all. Tailoring the perfect development opportunities for your team is another reason for them to stay.
It needs to be supported of course by a healthy, respectful and robust feedback culture. Give your team the gift of continuous feedback to encourage their continued growth and progression.
3. Compensate them competitively
Not everyone is motivated by money, but in a climate of rising inflation, wage competitiveness is crucial, not just for your staff being able to pay their bills, but also for them feeling respected and valued. Organisations who are not paying competitive salaries run the risk of breeding resentment in their teams.
It’s crucial therefore for leaders to understand current market salaries and how that compares to the bands you currently pay your team. A feeling of fair reward for effort is key.
Of course, fair reward is also linked to time spent at work. If there is no sense of work-life balance, then the level of effort required to get tasks done is out of whack. This builds the sense of stress, burnout and entrapment – so reassess workloads as required, particularly in a high turnover environment where absences maybe increasing the pressure on your team.
As a side note, I continue to be bewildered by organisations refusing to match employee salaries to market rates, then losing experienced staff as a result, only to have to pay market rates to recruit a new person anyway. It's far better to retain good people who know your business well by paying them fair market rates.
4. Keep the team diverse
The recruitment decisions you make as a leader - the people you choose to put into your team - have a direct impact on team culture. Team culture is a big factor in driving people away from their employers – it’s the manifestation of staff fleeing toxic work cultures.
Whilst leaders are careful not to recruit people who may disrupt an already high functioning team, it’s also important to protect against groupthink – which means keeping teams diverse. Encourage people with different perspectives. Be mindful of gender and cultural balances, and the right mixes of age and experience across your team.
Of course, encouraging diversity in the team might also mean that not everybody needs to work full time. Bringing flexibility to how you recruit could mean looking to contractors and freelancers to complement the skills already in your team – injecting some fresh perspectives for the duration of a critical project, for example.
Above all, keep working on your team culture – bad culture will turn people away quickly but good culture can also be a tremendous magnet to retaining your best people.
5. Trust your team
Ultimately a good relationship between team members and their leader comes down to trust.
This means, for example, resisting any tendencies towards micromanagement. Give your team realistic challenges and resources and let them get on with solving problems using their own skills and expertise.
Whilst remote working makes it harder for leaders to directly see what their teams are working on, the flexibility of remote working is an incentive for many workers to remain in their roles. Trust that your team can manage remote working and still meet their commitments.
Above all keep things fun. Find ways for your team to come together occasionally for social reasons – and preferably in real life. After all, online drinks were better than nothing during the harshest phases of lockdown, but there are now very few people who want to spend more time in front of a camera than they have to.
Look for milestones to celebrate together and help your team feel that their work makes a difference. Building that trust and camaraderie amongst colleagues is another crucial step towards retention.
PS – What about you?
As a final thought, one of the best things you can do is invest in your own development as a leader in order to be of greater service to your team. If you haven’t considered an assessment of your own leadership skills, or a leadership development program, maybe now is finally time to do so.
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