How engaging is money?

Many still believe that pay is the primary reason employees leave their jobs. This is a common misconception that mainly comes from the fact that when people do leave, they usually go to a higher-paid position. In exit interviews it is easier to identify that reasons for leaving are for more money or career opportunities. However, many staff on big salaries are unhappy, while staff earning a lot less can be very happy and engaged.

Financial packages can attract employees to a role, but not sustain their engagement. Interestingly, 89% of managers believe that employees leave for more money, whereas 88% of employees really leave for reasons other than money. In reality only 12 per cent of employees do leave due to financial reasons, mostly because they need to pay the extra bills. (Source: Saratoga Institute Research).

The truth is, employee engagement is determined far more by management practices than any other. "More than 70,000 exit interviews have proved that the principal reason people leave a company voluntarily is the behavior of their supervisors." (Source: Jac Fitz-Enz, The ROI of Human Capital)

Talented people want to be measured and rewarded for their successes
Many other reasons employees leave are because they feel devalued by the fact that pay is not linked to performance, or they have no idea how pay rises are determined. These reasons have more to do with management than just the size of the paycheck.

Most employees just want to be remunerated fairly compared to others in a similar field and situation. Access some pay scales to make sure you are paying market standards at least.

But more than that, employees in best practice organisations feel that:

• They are paid fairly for their contribution to the organisation's success
• Their performance has an impact on their pay
• They share in the financial success of the business

Remember this mantra:
What is important gets measured
What gets measured gets done
What gets done gets rewarded and
What gets rewarded is important

Purpose is an employees emotional salary

Individuals find it difficult to sustain their energy and be engaged when they feel their job has no real purpose beyond making money for someone else. When employees are not clear about their values and are unsure about how they serve the big picture, it can create feelings of frustration, insecurity, loss of purpose and meaning and thereby create disengagement. Employees begin to question whether they are succeeding or failing in their role. As a result, they start to question the organisation and become critical and uncommitted.

"93 per cent of engaged employees feel that the business has purpose."

(Source: Chart Your Course Workforce Retention Survey)
In 90 per cent of cases people in Best Employer companies are clear about the purpose and the common benefits. In other companies, only 75 per cent of the people in the company have a clear vision that they can support.

It is therefore up the CEO and managers to help inspire and reinforce an employee's sense of purpose and meaning, or risk losing them. You may like to ask yourself these sort of questions:

• Is the purpose of the organisation clearly articulated and reinforced?
• Are our employees clear on the big picture of the business and see how they meaningfully fit into it?
• Do our people feel like they work for a great organisation that contributes to the greater good of the community and is socially responsible?

Consider
1. Communicating and telling the company's story:

• Reinforce community success stories
• Make sure everyone understands the ultimate purpose and greater good of the business
• Create a more meaningful purpose for each team and person
• Highlight any support that the company has made to a charity or the environment
• Allow people to participant in volunteer activities outside work

2. Being the change you want to see:

• Demonstrate the values of the business by doing value-driven activities every day
• If you are trying to instil work life balance, be seen going home at a respectable time
• Managers don't just say that people are important, they demonstrate it in the things they do

3. Reinforcing why an individual's work is significant and how it fits into the bigger picture:

• Give positive feedback based on the values and purpose of the business
• Reinforce the purpose in the recruiting process

4. Getting individuals clear on what would make their work more meaningful:

• Create a culture of appreciation and gratitude throughout the business
• Provide career development tools
• Do personal reviews at least twice a year
• Help individuals establish a five-year vision
• Consider days off to do pro bono work for a cause
• If not much can be improved at work, focus on meaningful outside interests

Continually breaking in new employees is no way for your company to continue being successful

Unfortunately, 4 per cent of people leave after the first day and after six months engagement drops on average by 62 per cent (Source: Gallup). The good news is at least 60 per cent of premature turnover can be avoided.

Very early on, employees will know if the employer promises are being kept and their expectations are being fulfilled. Any omissions or lack of information about the reality of the new role can lead to mistrust and employee disengagement and result in people leaving prematurely. Constant recruiting is a costly exercise in terms of money and time.

Poor recruitment processes are commonly the villain when:

• Expectations are not met between the employee and organisation if the job is oversold by the recruiter
• The wrong person is hired and there is not a suitable match
• There is a flawed induction process where the new employee's sense of belonging is stagnated

Consider:

• Resisting the temptation to fill the vacant role with someone who may leave in 6 months anyway if the match is not right
• Doing new-recruit career development programs before employees start fully with the company
• Audit your employment process and compare the professionalism of external recruiters
• Be totally honest about the role and organisational experience (e.g. "A promotion won't be considered for the first 12 months." Or, "You have to work hard to get bonuses.")
• Reviewing your induction processes

Getting rid of the dead wood?

Here is a question from a reader of a recent "Engaging People" newsletter about the new self-driven employee engagement philosophy.

Question: Doesn't giving employees more control of their work, life and finances mean they get greater personal awareness and perhaps identify they should leave the organisation, therefore increasing turnover?

In some cases yes, and in most cases this is a good thing. Those that leave the organisation were those that were going to leave anyway. As such, this process can be likened to shaking the tree of its dead wood as, in most cases these people are the already disengaged "complacent cows" and "corporate cancer" that can be extremely unmotivating to the engaged "eager beavers".

One recent legal client we ran a program for was going to retrench 15% of their workforce. Two weeks after one of our face-to-face programs four people resigned. These four were all going to be retrenched anyway, thus saving the company over $200,000 in pay outs. The program however gave the leaving employees more autonomy in the decisions they were making. This also applied to the remaining employees, giving them more control over areas that they could take more responsibility in for improving their own work, life, finances and balance.

With the self-driven employee engagement approach and by using scalable systems and tools it can only create a sustainable win-win culture were everyone was a winner.

Appreciate your people & they will appreciate you

Being appreciated is one of the most basic human desires. Recognition, praise and appreciation are some of the best employee engagement investments that you can make and are certainly the easiest and cheapest ways to cultivate higher engagement in your people. When people are criticised, productivity and performance improves 19 per cent. If employees are praised, performance and productivity increases, on average, 71 per cent, but can improve by as much as 87 per cent (Source: How full is my bucket? Rath & Clifton).

"Praise is the greatest tool in behaviour modification ... it goads us to better performance and encourages us." B.F Skinner, Behavioural psychologist

Receiving gratitude, feeling respected and being valued are some of the most under-utilised and best return-on-investment business tools available because they're free. Employees simply look for a "thank you" to feel appreciated for their work. If they don't get it they can begin to feel taken for granted. In most cases recognition is psychologically worth more to employees than a pay rise.

The smallest comments can make the biggest differences for people. Try to be as specific as possible when expressing appreciation. Instead of saying: "Nice job with the new client last week," try: "I liked the way you went to the client's office to deliver the product in person. That really positioned us as part of their success team."

Here are some starters for you:

"One of your achievements that I'm most proud of is ....."
"You really made a difference by ..."
"I'm impressed by your ..."
"I admire you for ..."

Possible actions

• Get rid of the old-school management focus on improving weaknesses and instead concentrate on expanding people's strengths
• Gossip about the good work and behaviours you hear about others
• Whenever possible, try to be at the scene to witness and applaud people's achievements as they occur
• Make "thank you" part of your common language
• Learn to accept praise and compliments graciously yourself, otherwise it may not spread as quickly
• Put praise into writing as documentation delivers longer lasting benefits
• Applaud people in public (but give constructive feedback in private)