Leverage staff feedback to build a workplace employees do not want to leave

Recent research shows an uptick in hiring across many industries, and HR professionals are reporting increased difficulty in filling specific jobs. Three business leaders with decades of experience offer employers three tips for retaining their valuable employees in the new book, Hidden Drivers of Success: Leveraging Employee Insights for Strategic Advantage, published in March by the Society for Human Resource Management.

Improving organizational culture and retaining the best employees require collecting and analyzing data on why employees are leaving their organizations. The data employees possess can provide the information employers need to transform their organizations’ culture, turning them into workplaces employees do not want to leave. Hidden Drivers of Success outlines the three steps to getting the crucial information.

1. Know your Talent Value Proposition and make sure you deliver on it. The TVP provides a working description of the expected exchange between an employee and employer. What does the employee expect from the organization? Examples: flexibility, autonomous working environment, creative people. And what, in turn, does the employer expect from the employee? Examples: long work hours, creative output, adherence to company values. TVP information can easily be obtained by surveying staff and querying other observers of your organization’s culture, such as suppliers.
2. Create a retention index that will give early warnings of “hot” units–roles and locations in which higher turnover is likely. Designed well, a retention index can be created from a handful of survey questions and will show where to look for likely root causes. For organizations with such hot spots, interviews or focus groups can clarify what the deeper issues are, how they manifest themselves in the workplace, and what actions are needed to lower the temperature.

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