Cultures are set of interactions people have together to achieve a common goal. In today's workplace there are so many challenges facing employers such as the shared economy, competitors trying to hire way our top talent, under performing in nine connected employees, etc. These challenges beg the following five questions we believe every company should be held to answer and if not should serve as a source of inspiration to find answers:
- Are the top talent employees happy and challenged?
- Are employees truly being coached, mentored, and practiced with for greater skill development?
- Is there a metric in place that serves as a mechanism for management and upper management to constantly tweak and change talent development practices for employee retention?
- Do managers honestly have coaching conversations filled with questions and true active listening and embrace the notion of engagement versus it being a concept we talk about it management meetings?
- What percentage of people in each department feel like they're progressing in their careers and are likely to stay at the organization?
The key to answering these questions isn't to simply answer them but to actually validate how they are answered.
Recently, a president of a small manufacturing firm we met with was telling us how people were really happy at the company. I asked him how he knew the people were happy and to be blunt he seemed stunned by the question if not offended. I backpedaled a little bit and told him I ask the question as many companies truly cannot answer such a question. He responded with attributes such as we been in business 50+ years, we are a family-run organization, and we have a very strong open-door policy. It was interesting because within one week of meeting other managers what we literally heard were things like we don't change very well, we seem stuck in old practices, etc. I believe the owner was being honest in his response but what it indicated was a lack of honesty and metrics to truly answer these questions.
The risks of not being able to answer these questions are huge. What if top talent starts leaving because management is not engaged? What happens to employees who don't leave but have to pick up the rest of the work? What if we measured managers not just on results or numbers but their percentages related to retention or promotions? These are just a few questions to help you embrace the strategies at your organization for development, retention, and recruitment!
