Discover What Needs Fixing
Every company is scrambling to retain its best employees, and that’s no easy feat given that burnout numbers are still terrible and engagement scores are low. That’s why so many companies are experimenting with everything from retention bonuses, greater work-from-home flexibility, and hiring bonuses to backfill the employees that have quit. But all those techniques and motivators are unlikely to work if companies don’t first acknowledge a painful reality.
Before a company can retain its employees, it first has to stop frustrating and demotivating them.
In the study, Frustration At Work, Leadership IQ surveyed 2,553 employees to assess the biggest frustrations and roadblocks that were keeping them from being as productive as they could be. Among the major discoveries were that around 60% of employees say their frustrations at work are so severe that they want to look for other jobs, and 84% said that fixing their frustrations would make them significantly more productive.
While workload and staffing comprised the top two categories of frustrations, about 39% combined, the remaining frustrations were spread across issues like toxic coworkers, insufficient or poor management, and a lack of clear direction. In other words, while a lack of staff and increasing workloads get most of the press, there are myriad other frustrations that make employees want to quit.
Imagine that you’re an employee who regularly gives maximum effort at work; you clean up the messes left by less-effective coworkers, your customer service goes above and beyond, and you live the company’s values without exception. Now imagine that, whether from inattention or lack of courage, your manager fails to recognize you for going above and beyond everyone else. Or imagine that your manager lets your coworkers get away with not living the company’s values even though you exert extra effort to exemplify those values.
How frustrated would you be? Frustrated enough to quit? And would a small retention bonus or an extra week of vacation be enough to offset this pain?
The research is pretty clear that frustrations that severe have to be addressed directly. For example, in the study, Why Company Values Are Falling Short, we discovered that only a third of direct managers always hold people accountable to their company values. However, employees whose managers always hold people accountable are about 80% more engaged than employees whose boss never does so.
In the Leadership IQ study, The Risks Of Ignoring Employee Feedback, we learned that only 23% of people say that when they share their work problems with their leader, they always respond constructively. But employees whose leader does respond constructively are about 12 times more likely to recommend the company as a great employer.
The point of all this is simple: Before you worry about retention bonuses and all the rest, directly ask about and then fix employees’ frustrations. It’s easier, of course, to lament labor shortages or institute a few perks, but those are short-term bandages at best. At worst, those superficial attempts further alienate and irritate your best employees.
There’s no guarantee that you’ll be able to solve every single employee frustration. But if you don’t open that dialogue and start the process, your ability to keep top employees will only diminish.
