What employee turnover reveals about your leadership.
Employee turnover can reveal a lot of things. Surely turnover is normal but both too much and too little are signs of serious management issues. The pressures of the last ten years have led many in DeathCare to be frustrated with their employees. An attitude has sprung up that suggests a feeling like: “If somehow I could just fix my employees everything would be alright.”
High turnover rates and no turnover rates are actually two sides of the same coin. Both indicate an unwillingness to develop people and poor to nonexistent communication skills. It is the leader’s role to communicate what is expected of people, to follow through and to teach and to develop. High turnover indicates they have put too much pressure on people to meet expectations without giving them the tools and resources to do the job. Tools and resources include emotional support and guidance. Having no turnover is just as bad. If you are a firm of any size it is impossible that you haven’t got at least one person who doesn’t belong. Even Jesus made a bad hire although He did it on purpose to fulfill prophesy. Most often, when someone tells me (usually with some pride) that no one ever leaves I am willing to take a bet that they have several aimless people who couldn’t find work elsewhere who are just showing up for a paycheck.
Drucker’s Orchestra metaphor is the best illustration:
When a new orchestra leader takes over a poorly performing orchestra he does not have the luxury of letting everyone go and replacing them with top performers. Instead, he must ferret out the worst and work with the remaining average players to help them want to work at peak levels
Great leaders do 4 things extremely well:
- Select the right people
- Set clear expectations
- Motivate people to do their best
- Develop people
Interestingly, there are 8 things employees really want from leaders:
- Tell me my role, what to do, and give me the rules
- Clear direction
- Parameters so they can work within broad outlines.
- Discipline my coworker who is out of line
- Hold people accountable-be fair but hold fast to what is and is not acceptable
- Get me excited
- About the company
- About what we do
- About where I fit
- Don’t forget to praise me
- Don’t scare me
- They don’t really need to know about everything you worry about
- Don’t lose your temper
- Be fair and consistent
- Impress me
- be bold
- or be creative
- or be smart
- Give me some autonomy
- Give me a special project
- Trust me with an opportunity
- Set me up to win
- Indecisive leaders frustrate everyone and make them feel defeated
Do you find it interesting that financial incentives aren’t on this list? Turns out that money is only a demotivator. If you aren’t paid fairly it will demotivate you. Overpaying you will not motivate you or make you more loyal.
Enjoyed this! Always good to remind us of good skills
A great summary of getting the best from people. I would only add that people in our position tend to invest little in the way of time and resources to help ensure that the right people are hired. It is tremendously expensive and time consuming to hire someone and get someone properly oriented. We use personality profiles, intensive interviews (Topgrading SIDS interviews), background checks, drug screens, and contacts with previous supervisors. We ask the applicant “when we contact your previous supervisor at ________, what will she tell us about you?”
Good insight, Alan. I look forward to adding some of these suggestions, (and comments) to my tool box…..
As always, very good advice. Often not followed, but still good.