Yesterday’s Advisor alerted readers to the coming “Turnover Armageddon.” Today, nearly 3 dozen ideas of things you can do now—beyond offering more money—to retain your best workers, plus an introduction to the new total training system for supervisors and managers, TrainingToday.
Most experts believe that engagement is not all about money. There are actions you can take that could be effective at retention of high potential and/or key player employees. For example:
- Talk to the employees and let them know that you value their services and that you have high hopes for their futures at your company.
- If your total rewards package includes many benefits beyond salary, be sure that employees are aware of all they are getting beyond the paycheck.
- Establish a mentoring program to help high potential and key employees that upper management wants to help them succeed.
- Use stock options or other forms of payment that vest over time.
- Involve the employee in intriguing projects (“Next month we start implementing X; I’d like you on the implementation team”, or, “We’re establishing a companywide task force to explore X; I think you could contribute a lot to that.”).
- Offer special opportunities (“The president of the company is visiting next month; I’d like you to get together with him and explain your proposal for X.”)
And, of course, in a more general way, do those things that will make your workplace a “great place to work.”
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Here, from BLR’s 99 Ways to Keep Employees Happy, Satisfied, Motivated, and Productive, are a variety of engagement suggestions:
- Offer price discounts for company’s products/services to employees.
- Have a family day at work.
- Present employees with a shirt or jacket with the organization’s logo.
- Offer free vending service.
- Sponsor a health fair for employees.
- Offer discounted family-oriented activities for employees.
- Encourage employees’ spouses to travel with them on business.
- Celebrate the company’s milestones.
- Allow employees to work flexible hours.
- Include pictures of employees in company advertisements.
- Have top management meet with small groups of employees
- Allow employees time off to visit their children’s schools.
- Give employees opportunities to express how they feel about their jobs.
- Don’t punish employees for looking for another job.
- Publicize the company’s efforts to protect the environment.
- Offer more cross-training opportunities for employees.
- Offer a career development seminar.
- Send employees to a “ropes” course.
- Develop a guest speaker program.
- Give employees access to openings in other parts of the organization.
- Give employees time off to perform community services.
- Allow employees to work at home.
- Give employees the opportunity to visit other parts of the organization.
- Provide developmental assignments to employees.
- Give performance feedback more often than once a year.
- Update employees’ personal computers.
Do You Have to Consider These Engagement Options?
No, of course not. But where’s the blame going to land when your people are all leaving?
What are your supervisors and managers doing about retention and engagement? Are they acting according to your policies and applicable laws? Are you treating employees right?
The bottom line is untrained managers cost the company in many ways. And there’s only one way to prevent it—regular, meaningful training.
Think you don’t have the budget and time to organize a full-blown training program? Good news from BLR—now you can run your training program like a pro, with our new TrainingToday system.
TrainingToday is a leading provider of online education programs for employees and supervisors. Each course in our extensive library addresses a specific topic with engaging and interactive presentations, delivering practical advice and clear instructions that trainees will remember long after the training is complete.
Three Delivery Platforms
TrainingToday offers you the option of three delivery platforms to meet your organization’s needs:
Professional
- Unlimited training for your whole organization for one flat fee
- Easy to start up and track trainee progress
- Hundreds of courses available, from employment law compliance to sales excellence
Enterprise
The Enterprise includes all the features of the Professional Version plus:
- Track and report capability with built-in comprehensive Learning Management System
- Train with courses as they are, or make them truly your own with our customization options
- Upload your own content (power point, video, SCORM files, etc) to the LMS in addition to using our comprehensive training courses
SCORM
- Integrate content into your existing LMS
- Easy to tailor to your content, logo, presentation style, and corporate policies
- SCORM compliant to integrate with existing corporate learning systems
Looking to take your training program to the next level? Let TrainingToday help you manage a dynamite training program—enroll in our Instant Trainer Webinar Series and learn what it takes to make the most of every training dollar. Ready to learn more about TrainingToday? Sign up for one of our Product Demonstration Webinars
Here are just some of the many courses available at TrainingToday:
[Click here to download information on all courses and libraries.]
Over 75 HR and employment training courses covering topics such as: Sexual Harassment, Diversity, and ADA.
The Diversity library is an interactive training program with different modules for supervisors and employees. It features real-world scenarios and insightful commentary from a leading workplace expert and employment law attorney.
Preventing Sexual Harassment- National – NEW!
This library will give you everything you need to train your employees, supervisors, and managers on how to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace. Several training options available for multiple year training.
Leadership Training for Managers and Supervisors
A variety of helpful courses designed to teach valuable management techniques to supervisors.
Provides tools and information to employees in a leadership position, or aspiring leaders, to improve their business, leadership, and professional skills.
Includes customer service training courses covering topics such as: Phone Skills, Handling Complaints, Identifying Customer Needs and Team Building.
Includes wellness training courses covering topics such as: Creating a Successful Wellness Program, Balancing Work and Home, Healthy Aging, and Hazards of Smoking: How to Quit.
HR Video Training for Supervisors
These HR video supervisory training courses provide expert advice from practicing licensed attorneys on topics such as hiring, firing, privacy, discrimination, sexual harassment and more.
Over 90 workplace safety training courses covering topics such as: Slips, Trips, and Falls, HazCom, and Forklift Safety.
Sales – NEW!
The Sales Training library consists of 12 courses, everything you need to build a top-notch sales staff!
Looking to take your training program to the next level or need to convince your organization that training is critical to long term success—enroll in our Instant Trainer Webinar Series and learn what it takes to make the most of every training dollar. Ready to learn more about TrainingToday? Sign up for one of our Product Demonstration Webinars.
Over 90 workplace safety training courses cover topics such as Slips, Trips, and Falls, HazCom, and Forklift Safety.
I’ve seen contradictory reports lately on how important money is to employees–they seem to say that it’s most important to the highest performers. But engagement is important for every level of performer, whether via money or not.
Although recognition is an important facet to retention and engagement; it is only the tip of the engagement model.
Engagement is a business strategy, not an HR program or process. Engagement is a condition where employees enthusiastically contribute their intellectual, emotional and physical resources to achieving goals of the organization or group. It is a workplace approach designed to ensure employees are committed to their organization’s goals and values and motivated to “contribute” to organizational success. Engaged employees work for what they can “give” not what they can “get”. Compensation is the reward for their commitment, intellectual input, creativity, problem solving and drive to achieve the company’s goals and objectives.
Employee engagement is a business measure and there are four things that drive it:
1. provide relevant information and understanding (of the business, their roles, accountabilities and expectations)
2. Provide tools to act on the information (action planning meetings to identify below threshold departmental business objectives and design plans to improve those objectives.
3. Provide opportunities to use the tools. (performance Scorecards, action planning meetings)
4. Provide reward for improvement.. a compelling reason to participate.
This, in my opinion, is what engagement is about….