Recruitment, retention and off-boarding – a lifecycle for valuing your employees

By Elisabeth Goodman, 15th March 2021

Valuing people when they work for you

I had the opportunity recently to host a breakout discussion during a One Nucleus’ (2021) “My question is..” lunchtime session. The question I posed was: “If individuals can choose the company they work for, how do leaders and managers demonstrate that they value that choice?”

It was a deliberately provocative question, seeking to go beyond questions of financial incentives to the essence of what leaders and managers can do to demonstrate that they value each and every individual in their employment. It’s a topic that is close to my heart and integral to a lot of my work with managers and team members in the Life Science. The current pandemic and the changes it’s created in working practices and in individuals’ expectations was of course a big influence on the lunchtime discussion with One Nucleus.

We thought that leaders and managers would have to respond to requests from employees for new ways of working.  We also thought that value can be demonstrated by building in time for social connections at the start of team meetings and regular 1-on-1’s between managers and members of their teams. Providing opportunities for learning and development will also increase motivation – something that I have seen several employers try to do despite the disruptions at the present time.

Interestingly, the latest issue of Harvard Business Review also echoes these themes in two of its articles.

Valuing prospective candidates

The first article is a review of a Gartner white paper (2021) on “Reengineering the recruitment process”. The pandemic has apparently accelerated shifts that were already starting to happen. Amongst the trends is an indication that prospective candidates are increasingly selecting where they work based on the “value proposition” of the employer. Candidates’ criteria include:

• How companies have helped their employees with work / life balance during the pandemic
• Whether the work involved will be ‘meaningful’
• The freedom to work remotely
• Flexibility in managing their own schedules

Amongst the author’s (Dion Love) conclusions, this one in particular stood out for me:

“Firms must understand candidates’ expectations” and craft positions accordingly, “in the same manner in which they tailor their services to customers”

Dion Love as cited in Harvard Business Review, 2021

This idea of treating employees as you would your customers is an interesting one for managers and leaders to consider too. There is a link here to the impact on a company’s reputation as in the next section of this blog.

Valuing people when they leave

The second article, by Dachner and Makarius (2021) focused more on valuing employees when they leave. As the authors point out, the imperative is not just one of meeting legal requirements. It also makes sense from a competitive, reputational stand point. They quote George Sample, an HR practitioner:

“The tighter the competition and the tougher the battle for talent in your industry, the more imperative it is to have dedicated and thoughtful offboarding efforts.”

George Sample cited in Dachner and Makarius, 2021

This other quote by Mike Quinn, a senior vice president at a chemicals company is also very illustrative:

“When people leave, they are going to talk about the company and the way they were treated on the way out. You want them and your current employees to realize that people are treated well even when they leave.”

Mike Quinn cited in Dachner and Makarius, 2021

The authors come up with a list of recommendations, based on their own research on employee turnover, a review of academic and practitioner articles (1980 – 2020) and a scouring of company websites, newspapers and magazines and interviews with HR professionals.

These recommendations include:

• Introducing the concept of a company alumni programme at the recruitment stage
• Recognising that employees will have career and progression ambitions that might at some point take them out of the company
• Having open discussions with individuals about these career and progression plans and actively supporting them with these e.g. through challenging assignments, mentoring and coaching, introducing them to external networks
• Being active and transparent about succession planning
• Doing public thank yous for people when they leave (assuming the separation is amicable)
• Having well constructed exit interviews to support learning by the employer
• Providing post-separation support – if applicable
• Keeping in touch through an alumni programme that might include inviting people back periodically – for instance to provide insights, consultancy or temporary project work.

Conclusion

I’ve deliberately focused in this article on what organisations can do to demonstrate that they value employees at various stages of the employment life cycle.

There is of course another side to the equation: what employees can do to demonstrate their commitment to the organisation. Employees are accountable for delivering against expectations, and for working with the other members of their team in a way that promotes trust, inclusivity, mutual support and continuous improvement. That’s something that I have covered elsewhere. (See for example Goodman 2018).

Notes

References

Dachner, A.M. and Makarius, E.E. (2021). Turn departing employees into loyal alumni. A holistic approach to offboarding. Harvard Business Review, March – April, 89-97

Goodman (2018). Defining team norms for high performance teams. Retrieved from https://elisabethgoodman.wordpress.com/2018/06/03/defining-team-norms-for-high-performance-teams/

Harvard Business Review (2021). Reengineering the recruitment process. The skills needed in many roles are continuously changing – and sources of talent are too. March – April, 17-20.

One Nucleus (February, 24 2021). My question is…. Retrieved from https://onenucleus.com/blog/my-question-isnetworking-lunch-24th-february

About the author

Elisabeth Goodman is the Owner and Principal Consultant at RiverRhee Consulting, a consultancy that specialises in “creating exceptional managers and teams”, through coaching, courses and workshops, and with a focus on the Life Sciences. RiverRhee is a member-to-member training provider for One Nucleus.

Elisabeth founded RiverRhee Consulting in 2009, and prior to that had 25+ years’ experience in the Pharmaceutical Industry in line management and internal training and consultancy roles supporting teams on a global basis.

She is developing her coaching practice, with a focus on helping individuals to exercise choice and realise their potential in the workplace by enhancing their leadership / management, interpersonal and communication skills, and their ability to deal with uncertainty and change.

Elisabeth is accredited in Coaching (ACC – International Coaching Federation, PG Certification in Business and Personal Coaching), Change Management, Lean Sigma, Belbin Team Roles, MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator) and is an NLP (NeuroLinguistic Programming) Practitioner. She is also a member of the APM (Association for Project Management) in which she was a founding member of the Enabling Change SIG.

Elisabeth is also the founder of The Coaches’ Forum – an international community of interest for coaches to explore ideas and insights as an extension to their personal and professional development.

Creating and finding those inspirational managers for our teams – a Cambridge Network event

People leave their managers not their companies

“70% of people leave their managers or supervisors, not their company”.  These were some of the research findings shared with us this morning by Sue Gibson, Human Resources Consultant at DoubleG Assosiates LLP, in a Cambridge Network Breakfast meeting on retention and motivation of staff.  She also told us that mediocre managers can do a lot of damage ‘under the radar’ and can pass on stress and stifle employee engagement through inappropriate authoritarian attitudes.

As a trainer and consultant who focuses on ways to relieve the pain of people in teams, by working with inspirational managers who want to improve the way they support team members, as well as equipping the team with tools to improve their work, I was very interested to learn more about this topic!

So what makes for an inspirational manager?

We all shared our own experiences of those managers that we remember to this day or, as Sue described, ‘have a following’.  Those that have inspired us:

• Have vision
• Can relate and communicate with everyone in their team
• Empower individuals
• Speak from the heart, with passion about what they are doing
• Have integrity
• Are happy to recruit people better than themselves
• Focus on the career progression of the people in their teams

They are also, in the words of one of the delegates who is a school governor: “a critical friend”.  They will give honest, timely, constructive feedback, and are consistent in doing so.

technical competence is not a criterion for becoming a manager

We have all come across situations where people have been promoted to management roles as the only route to reward their technical competence, and that of course is not necessarily the right solution.

People forced into a management route will not necessarily have the passion or aptitude for it and may spend their time trying to find opportunities to still use their technical skills.

Enlightened organisations, and there were some in the room, have developed 2 branches for promotion, so that people can progress according to their preference and strength along a technical or a management route.

How to find and develop those inspirational managers

Sue described how one organisation she supports identifies their existing inspirational managers and asks them to act as talent scouts to spot potential new talent.  These people can then choose whether or not they would like to progress up a management or a technical chain and trains them accordingly for active succession planning.

Another delegate described how they use a buddy system for new managers to help them get up to speed more quickly and effectively.

There was a general consensus that some form of active management training is needed, rather than expecting managers to just learn on the job.

other key considerations for retention and motivation

The seminar was not just about inspirational managers, but about what can be done to retain staff.  Sue stressed that this is not about rules, processes or restrictions but about getting a number of things right.  Her list included:

• Culture
• Interesting work
• Development
• The mindset of leaders and managers (which brings us back to the earlier points on inspirational managers)
• Making sure that people know what is expected of them
• Having clear organisational goals
• Pay
• Benefits

We discussed examples of individuals writing their own objectives based on the organisational goals and relating to performance (things they need to do for the job) and also their own personal development.  In Sue’s experience people have also been asked to assess their own performance against their objectives.  I mentioned that this had hints of the situation at Morning Star described by Gary Hamel in the Harvard Business Review, which I wrote about in one of my other blogs: “Why is employee engagement such an important topic?”

We also discussed the importance of showing people that they are valued, and giving managers the scope and authority to show recognition.  Sue gave examples of giving someone a meal out with their partner, including making babysitting arrangements with a professional Nanny, or paying for a week-ends Italian lessons for someone who wanted to learn. As she pointed out, the cost of these kind of recognition packages are far less than the value delivered by an employee going beyond routine requirements, or indeed the cost of replacing someone and of the knowledge lost when they leave.

In the work that I do with teams, retention and motivation is also about creating an environment where people can thrive, where they have time to think and be creative as a result of being able to focus on the key priorities of their business.

managers need to be aware of generational differences in their staff

This is a fascinating area to explore.  I didn’t quite catch everything Sue was saying at this point, so some of the following notes are a bit improvised, but it was along the lines that those aged between 30 – 40 expect to be taught, are generally technology ‘savvy’, will be tolerant of their managers and are OK about change.

Those aged 30 years and under though are more likely to teach themselves, are technology ‘wise’, will work hard if they are interested, expect their managers to collaborate with them (because they are equal) and are likely to be more actively mobile.

So these considerations reinforce what we already know, that managers need to understand their staff and relate to them as individuals, in order to manage them well.

Concluding thoughts

We finished with some discussions in small groups.  Some of the thoughts that came out of these were:

• In small organisations, when people go on holiday, it gives those left in charge the opportunity to develop. (We’d touched earlier on the importance of giving people challenges outside their comfort zones for the same reason.)
• There seems to be an optimum ratio of 1 manager to 8-10 staff in order to be able to build rapport, engage with team members and generally manage them well
• Managers can be blockers!
• The importance of empowering staff to improve the way they work as they are the ones who will best understand the opportunities to do so.
• In start-ups, HR should be a foundation stone, not an add on: people can be the biggest asset, as well as the biggest cost!

Were you at this seminar?  If so, and you’d like to add any material that I’ve missed, do feel free to do so as a comment.  Also, if you think I’ve misinterpreted anything that was said, do please set me right!

Notes

Elisabeth Goodman is the Owner and Principal Consultant at RiverRhee Consulting, a consultancy that helps business teams to enhance their effectiveness for greater productivity and improved team morale. Elisabeth has 25+ years’ experience in the Pharmaceutical Industry where she has held line management and internal training and consultancy roles supporting Information Management and other business teams on a global basis.  Elisabeth is accredited in Change Management, in MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator) and in Lean Sigma and is a member of CILIP (Chartered Institute for Library and Information Professionals), and APM (Association for Project Management).