How to maintain employee motivation?

Find out what your employees want!

In our engagement interviews, we ask the question 'What’s great about working here?'  

Find out what you do well from the only people capable of telling you – your employees. Perhaps they’ll talk highly of your training programs, the quality of support from managers, the diversity of clients, the routine of each day… These strengths are what you must protect! 

For fast solutions from surveys, take a look at www.retentionpartners.com.au/metrics.php.

Seize the day with employee motivation

If you are facing larger-than-life volumes of employment retention, and good employees walking out the door, it won’t be long until you have mountains of recruitment and training issues. More to do, less time to do it, no budget. Yikes. And in a labour tight market, you’ll need more than good luck.  There is some advice you really need to know about. And it is this. If you keep doing things the way you always have, nothing will change. In 6 months time, you’ll still be sitting there with exit interviews, mounds of recruitment and mounds of induction and training sitting in your to do pile, rather than new challenges, or contributing to change and innovation for your business.

So, if this sounds like you then today is the day to do something different.
Taking inspiration from a life coach I know, I would suggest that there are 3 golden rules to make sure in 6 months time you’re not still facing the exact same issues around employment retention.

1. Make a commitment to do something around retention and people every day. No matter how small – every single day. An email recognising an effort, a birthday cake, thank you flowers, organising a career coach for someone, a walk around to say ‘hi’ to the darkest recesses of the office. The list is endless. I read somewhere that if you spend 6 minutes a day on this, you’ll notice a big impact. And what’s more, the more actions you do, the easier it will be. Whether its for someone you are managing, or the wider company, if you’re doing something different, the results will not stay the same.

2. Have a retention plan and find someone who will make you accountable. You need a plan for getting things back to normal limits for the people within your influence. You need to really understand why people are leaving and what can be done about it. We work with many clients to do just that – make a plan that is realistic and culture-sensitive. It is so great to see someone armed with a plan that they believe in and want to and can do. The results will speak for themselves.

3. Seek out inspiring people to learn from and get new ideas from. Join a network, read blogs, read a book, find a role model, listen to a podcast. Keep your brain fresh and active and your passion high. You are not the only person facing turnover issues, so join with likeminded others and learn from them.

These 3 things are all do-able, all within easy grasp. I guess its about less navel gazing about more action. Get to the heart of where things are going wrong for you, and do something about it. Its never too late to start.

What Lettuce and employee engagement have in common!

So, years ago someone explained to me the principles of sales.

‘Lisa’, they said, ‘imagine that you’re selling lettuce. There’s going to be a third of the market that LOVES lettuce and they’ll find you and buy your lettuce and keep coming back for more’.

Excellent!

‘And there’ll be a third of the market, that you’ll have to go and find and persuade of the benefits of lettuce and then they’ll agree and buy your lettuce’.

All right!

‘Then there’ll be the third of the market that doesn’t like lettuce, will never like lettuce, won’t buy your lettuce no matter how cheap or delicious it is’.

Your workforce is kinda similar. There’s a big group who come back day after day, saying ‘yes, I like what this company offers’.

There’s another group you have to work on: they’ve already bought your lettuce (read: ‘accepted the job offer’) but need more reasons to keep eating it.

And there’s a group of your employees right now who have decided that they don’t like your lettuce anymore, no matter what you say or do to persuade them.

So where do you focus your efforts on? The happiest group? The disgruntled group?

We would say, forget the really disgruntled group. Your best efforts are spent on moving the reluctant lettuce-eaters to be more enthusiastic first, then focus on keeping the happy ones happy. That way, you’re growing a bigger core of employees who are more likely to stay and to perform. THEN you can spend time figuring out what turned off so many employees, or why potential employees don’t apply to you in the first place.

I know employee engagement is trickier than selling lettuce, but think about segmenting your workforce in those three groups – it might help you re-focus your efforts.

One client’s employee engagement survey showed that 24% of employees self-declared that they were actively disengaged!

Let us help you with your engagement strategy and help protect your revenue!

For more information on employee engagement please call us on 1300738371

Performance management and the bell curve

So why do we try to force people onto a performance bell curve anyway?

Is the very best I can do at work the same as your very best? Is my bad day equivalent to the guy at the next desk? The bell curve assumes so, and measures us all the same.

I do believe in the bell curve. Just not one for everyone.

I think we should all have our own bell curve.

I’d like to be measured on how well I can perform. And shouldn’t that be okay for an organisation? Am I doing the best I can?


So here’s my 3 year old godson, Joshua. Isn’t he the best?!

And here’s his brother James (he hasn’t been born yet, but mum’s hoping any day now!)

Here are things that Josh does amazingly well: he loves fishing, can identify maybe 10 different dinosaurs, can work the DVD all by himself and he loves hanging out with his grandad Tom.

Now, in 2015, when baby brother James is 3, if he’d rather play with horses than dinosaurs, if his favourite oldie is grandma Pat, if he likes going to bed early, if he’s a techno-clutz – will that make him a lesser boy than Josh?

Uh, no.

We’ll compare of course. But James is going to be the best version of James that it’s possible to be, and the worst version of Josh, because Josh has the whole ‘being the best version of Josh’ thing all sewn up.

So my organisation is made up of Josh’s and James’ (or Lisa’s, Gemma’s, Fiona’s etc etc). Why do I have to measure myself against the best that Gemma can be, for example? Isn’t it enough that I work to the best of my ability on any given day? Isn’t that my best benchmark: ‘how well are you doing compared to how well could you do?’ I can think of 11 things off the top of my head that Gem’s better at than me (Hi Gem!).

So, damn the bell curve! It makes life easy at performance review time, for sure. And who doesn’t love administrative ease?

But as a tool to plot an employee’s effectiveness compared to all others?

Our mantra in this office is ‘one size fits one’ and our challenge to the HR community is to abandon efficient tools and have courage to embrace effective ones.


So why do we try to force people onto a performance bell curve anyway?

Is the very best I can do at work the same as your very best? Is my bad day equivalent to the guy at the next desk? The bell curve assumes so, and measures us all the same.

I do believe in the bell curve. Just not one for everyone.

I think we should all have our own bell curve.

I’d like to be measured on how well I can perform. And shouldn’t that be okay for an organisation? Am I doing the best I can?

If you would like access to Retention Partners webinars and much more Subscribe now.