Our speaker today is Cynthia Keaton with Keaton HR. Before I turn it over to Cynthia, I'd like to let those of you who are live with us know that you may submit questions during the webinar via the Q&A tab at the bottom of the screen. This webinar will also be recorded so that you may watch or re-watch on demand at your convenience. And with that, I turn it over to Cynthia. All right. Good afternoon, everyone. Let me get the slides going here. Can you see my slides okay? Let me make sure. Okay. All right. Well, let's get started. I want to welcome everyone to a discussion about keys to employee retention. So I've been in HR for a really long time and I've seen a lot of things work and a lot of things not work for employee retention. So I want to share some topics with you that I think are very effective. Not all of them are going to work in your environment. Some of them will, some of them won't, and it depends on the time, the resources, and the focus that you have. So I won't be able to go into topics very deeply, but I will go into several of them to give you some alternatives to think about. And then my contact information is going to be at the end of the presentation and you can feel free to reach out to me if you would like to discuss it further. So I'm going to start off talking about different factors that affect employee retention. There are many that affect whether or not an employee will plan to stay with you. Culture is one of the major ones. I hesitate to use the word culture because that's kind of become a political term, but I don't mean it that way. I just mean the way that your organization operates, your mission, your visions, and your values. I'm looking, yes. I'm so sorry to interrupt. I don't see slides on your screen. Okay, you don't? No, you might have to reshare your screen. All right, let me, okay, hold on a second. Sorry about that, everybody. Let me reshare my screen here. Okay, can you see that now? Yes, you're good now. Okay, awesome. Let me put it in presentation mode. Okay. Okay. All right, get back to where I was. Okay, I'm going to talk about onboarding for retention because you need to be thinking about retention when you are first recruiting an employee and when they're first onboarded. And we're going to talk about the timing of onboarding and what that should look like. Importance of ongoing feedback, not just at performance review time. That is also something that will help people stay. Having a total compensation package that is competitive is extremely important right now. The focus on work-life balance and what that could mean because it means different things at different companies. How to use exit interviews. Rewards and recognition, different types of programs that you can use that will help retain employees. And then finally, and really important, is preparing your supervisors to lead. A lot of companies promote employees from an individual contributor to a supervisor, but without any preparation. And employees do lead supervisors more than they lead companies. So it's really important to prepare your supervisors to do a really good job in managing your employees. All right, so I want to talk about how important it is to focus on the idea of retention while you're recruiting somebody. So they have to begin these efforts at your first interaction with them because employees could be interviewing with multiple companies. They could be in various stages of job offers with different companies, particularly now and particularly with your technical employees. They have many, many options and they are likely to be recruited by multiple companies. So you are competing with these other companies more than likely for this employee. So how they feel about the interview process will have a big decision-making part in whether they come with you and whether they stay. Because just because they come, initially doesn't mean they're going to stay. A survey from Gartner, that's an employee information research kind of company, 50% of candidates accepted a job offer and then backed out in 2023. That seems like an astronomical number to me, but Gartner is a really great organization. So I do trust their research. That's the reason to engage them upfront and make sure they actually do come on board with you. And then 31% of employees have quit a job within the first six months. So not only do you have to get them in the door, but you also have to engage them and make them want to be here at your company in order to retain them. So that's Bamboo HR did that research and they also do a lot of research about employee issues. So why is retention so very important? And the obvious reason is it's more efficient and cost-effective to retain quality employees than to recruit new ones. Because recruiting is expensive and recruiting is very time-consuming. So the estimates by Gallup, another great organization, is it costs between 50% and 200% of annual salary to replace an employee. So there's all the time and effort. And then likely in a heavy equipment environment, you've got post-office physicals, background checks, drug screens, much less employees' time, the supervisor's time in interviewing all these people. So it does add up fast. The higher the level of position, obviously the more it's gonna cost to replace them. If you think 50% of an average employee's salary, that's a lot of money. And if you add that up based on your turnover rate, you can see how much it's costing to replace employees when if you could just have retained them, you would have saved all that money. There are, according to SHRM, SHRM Society for Human Resource Management, there are five leading causes of job satisfaction. And job satisfaction is gonna cause employees to stay with you. The more satisfied, the more likely they are to stay. That's pretty logical. So the first one is respectful treatment of everyone. So not just themselves, but how they see other people being treated. Whether or not their compensation and pay is fair to them, they think it's fair. Whether or not they trust management. So what is the level of trust between the supervisors and the managers and the employees? Whether or not they feel their job is secure, and do they have opportunities to use their skills and abilities? So that's the five leading cause of retention. So HR folks have lots of things to worry about. I know in my 20 plus years in actually active HR management, I had plenty of things to worry about. On a daily basis, it changed. But 75% of the head of HR, chief HR officers or CHROs say talent retention and attraction is now their top concern. So it is a big deal. And in this industry, it's a really big deal. I'm sure you know how many of your employees get recruited regularly. So the first thing you can do is to create a positive culture. And I say that because employees do look for who other employees say is a good place to work. They are talking to their friends, they're talking to others when they're out on job sites, when they're at conferences, whatever, about what's it like to work at this company? Do you like working there? How do they treat you? So that goes a long way for whether or not they're interested in that call that they get possibly from a recruiter that says, hey, I would like for you to work for my company. So if they've heard good things about the company, they're more likely to listen. So you want your company to have that positive culture and be that company that people think, hey, I would like to work for this company. I've heard some great things about it. So when employees feel that they are connected to the mission, vision and values of your company, that leads to more job satisfaction and more engagement. So basically, do they believe in what you're doing and the way that you're doing it? That's really important. And they're more likely to stay when they feel appreciated and supported for what they do. A lot of times I've heard the comments, well, that's their job. Why do they require some special attention just because they're doing their job? But they do. Everybody wants to feel appreciated. Everybody wants to be recognized for the job that they do. So it's worth taking the time to do that. Also, do they feel like they belong there? So diverse employee populations are a reality and we need to make sure that we're accommodating everyone and that everybody feels like they belong. So when they align with your values, they feel appreciated and they feel like they belong because relationships at work is another reason that employees do stay. When you have them feeling like this is my family, I'm coming to work to see my family, they're more likely to stay with you. So it's really important that you focus on those, you know, the soft things that make people want to be in your environment. If you don't have core values, if your company doesn't have them, you really should develop core values. That's up to your leadership to do, but employees need to know what your values are. What's important to this company? Is it safety? Is it quality? Are they equally important? What is driving this company? And they need to understand it and they need to believe in it. Once when I worked at a cement company, it was a global cement manufacturer. We had the French CEO come to the United States and do a whole trip on just employee mission, vision, values. So this is about 15 years ago, I guess. And I still remember him doing that and the values were strength, performance, and passion. So everybody knew that's what they focused on. There were posters everywhere. People were talking about it. It's important that they know what that is. And more important even than having the values is having managers that live the values. So if you say safety is our value, that's our number one core value is to keep everybody safe. And you've got leadership that does things that aren't safe or that supports behaviors that aren't safe, then they're not gonna believe in that. So you have to walk the talk. I used to tell my HR teams, everybody's watching you and you can't say this is the policy if you're not following it. It's the same thing. You gotta always lead by example. Another thing that binds people in a culture and creates a positive culture is they're feeling like they have open communication that they can say what they think about something, how something's done without repercussions. There are organizations that I've been in that that is not the case, that people know things are not being done right. They know that things aren't being done safely, but they don't feel like they can say it to anybody. So it's really important that when people come forward and they're brave enough to say something that your culture supports that and listens. And another thing post COVID is prioritizing the wellbeing of your employees. Work-life balance is, it's a buzzword right now, but post COVID, it's more important than ever that people want that work-life balance. They want to be able to have time with their family. They wanna have a more flexible life. So it's important that you think about what can work-life balance look like at my company. One way to do all of this, and I've done this at a company before, so I can speak to it, is forming a culture committee. What a culture committee does, it doesn't have to be anything really too fancy or formal, but they help identify what is not working in your culture and what's good. And they work to improve the good and drive down the bad. So it's really important that you don't have a bad culture because the negative effects are, it leads to higher turnover, it leads to employees who are disengaged, it leads to low morale, poor customer service and lower profitability overall when employees think they work in a bad culture. So it's worth the time to do something to make sure that you have a positive culture. And one of the benefits of having a group of people that are called a culture committee or whatever your organization might wanna call it, is it brings various people together that have different opinions and different experiences from different companies. It can help leadership understand how employees see the culture, because sometimes how leadership sees the culture is not the way employees see culture. So they need to be educated on what employees are thinking and how they're feeling. And these employees on the committee can be the ones to drive the change for the positive, because they're more in tune with their peers and they can better communicate positive messaging. Like people are gonna listen to their peers oftentimes before they listen to the leadership about culture. So it's a good forum to help drive what you wanna do. Super easy to form a committee. You need to know, first of all, what's the purpose? Like what aspects of your culture need focus? And that's what they'll work on. You wanna select members from different departments and different levels in the organization. And you want people who are passionate about culture, who are passionate about the company, who think it's a great place to work. And you also wanna make sure you have the support of your leadership before you do anything like this. So I would say, if your leadership doesn't support these initiatives, then there's no point in forming a committee, right? Like you have to have leadership buy-in and leadership support for this committee to be effective. And they need to know what is expected of them. You need to tell them what their responsibilities are, how often are they gonna meet. And once they come up with recommendations, how are decisions gonna be made about the things that they come up with? I've worked in some really interesting culture committees with employees that come from all levels and walks of life and things that I would never have thought of, they brought up as being important to the culture. So it's important to have that diversity of opinion on the committee. All right, so that's the first idea that might work in your company. Might not, but that's something to think about if you don't have one. The second topic is onboarding. So effective onboarding is so important. I think a lot of times companies have been recruiting for some money for so long, and they finally get somebody and they need to get them to work and they overlook the importance of onboarding them very well. So you saw the information before about how often people will take a job and then decline, even before they get there, but then after they get there. So you wanna interview people with an idea of, I want the right people to come in the door so that I can engage them right from the start. Because if you bring in the wrong people, it doesn't matter how much you onboard them and how well they're not gonna stay. So what are some things that you can do for that? Is you wanna make sure when you're interviewing, you're interviewing for the actual job that people are gonna do. I have seen the job description not match the actual job, and the person comes in and starts doing the job and they're like, I don't like this, this is not a good job because it's not what I was recruited for. And then they leave. So it's really important that you have your job descriptions up to date, they're accurate, and they reflect what the person's actually gonna be doing and the skills that you need for that job. So that's the first thing. And the second thing is interview for behavior. Make sure that you ask behavioral based questions. How did you do this kind of thing at your prior company? How, what's an example of when you saw a safety violation and you said something? Because the best predictor of what they're gonna do in the future is what they did in the past. So even if people don't have, yet have experiences in the workplace, they've been in organizations, they've been in school, that you could ask them behavioral based interview questions. That you ask, how did they do things? And what was the behavior? Because you might learn things from that interview that you say, this person will never fit our culture. This is, I mean, I've been in an interview was when I was at the cement plant, I'll never forget this. We asked about a safety example and the guy told about every reason why he could not wear these cut resistant gloves at work and he refused to do it. And we're like, okay, not this person because safety is number one in our environment. And we want somebody who doesn't just refuse to do something, but tries to address the problem. So you could learn a lot about whether or not you're bringing in the right people to onboard by doing that. Once you have the person, you like the person, you've made the job offer, that is when onboarding begins. Onboarding does not begin when they walk in the door, it begins when they accept the job offer. Because again, in that interim period, they could still be interviewing, they could still be thinking about whether or not they wanna work for you. So you wanna make sure you're reaching out to them and retaining them. Some things you can do during that pre-boarding period is what I call it, make sure that you are ready for this person when they show up. I have spent many, many days chasing down appropriate equipment, cell phones, laptops on somebody's first day because it wasn't ready before they got there. That looks really bad, right? So think about an experience that you might have had when you started a new company. Did they look like they were ready for you? Did they look like they were looking forward to having you there? Or were you a last minute thought? And they were scrambling to get you a place to sit, your place was not clean, not organized, whatever. You wanna make sure you're ready for them. And that gives you some time between the job offer, acceptance and when they start to do these things. Okay, another thing that I recommend to make sure they go through with taking the job offer and stay is having a supervisor reach out to that person once they've formally signed the job offer and welcome them and say how happy you are they took the job. It takes like five minutes, but the person's working for the supervisor, they're not working for HR. Their relationship is with the supervisor, not with HR. Like we'll see them, of course, we support everybody in HR, but that relationship with the supervisor is super important. And I recommend that they call and welcome them as soon as they know they've accepted the job. I also recommend if there's something to think about is to send some company swag to their home with a sign card that says, hey, welcome to, welcome to the company, I'm happy you're here. HR can take care of that part of it, but you're not only appealing to the employee, you're appealing to any spouse who might be at home also involved in this decision-making process. You'd be surprised how much people love things like T-shirts and Yetis and whatever. Like they love getting company swag. So I think that's something that's inexpensive, doesn't take much time, that does make a difference. Also, you want them reviewing your benefits information, make sure that spouse has access to that benefits information beforehand, especially if you have good benefits, because that's another thing that will be important to making that final decision. During that pre-boarding time, also assign a new hire buddy, and I'll talk a little bit more about that program, but that can work in some environments. Another thing I think is really nice to do is send an announcement to the team. Hey, this is the new hire, this is who they are, this is their experience, and welcome them when they get here. Just so that they know something about the person, they know they're coming, they know when they're coming, and they know something about them. So that way, the person feels welcome when they show up. So what am I supposed to do in onboarding? Onboarding is not just orientation, it's not just feverishly signing documents, getting that I-9 finished. That's orientation, that's paperwork. Hopefully you've got an HR system in place that most of that paperwork is done before they even get there, and you can actually start the process of onboarding them. And what does that mean? You want them to know, this is why this company is unique. I had a CEO who would come to every onboarding slash orientation and talk about the history of the company. He would talk about the values of the company, what their growth plans were, where they came from, the history. And when he couldn't be there, we showed the video of that, because you're, again, confirming their decision to be there. You want them to understand the mission and values of your company. You want them to really understand how does their job matter? Like, what is their job doing that fulfills the company mission? Why are they important to you? So this is an opportunity for them to feel like part of your organization and what they can do to help it succeed. So you've bound them in from the beginning. You're forming the relationship with the supervisor. You're forming the relationship with the team because they know about them, they're welcoming them. And now they're understanding, hey, my job is really important to what's going on here. And if the CEO can take the time to do that, then a supervisor should take the time to do what's necessary to onboard. So orientation, again, it's not onboarding. Orientation is the beginning of onboarding. The length of time varies by company. Some companies have onboarding activities for the first year an employee is there, because it takes a year in general for an employee to be fully functioning at a company. Some companies have it for six months. It just varies depending on your company. And once they have been onboarded to the overall mission of the company itself, then it becomes department and position onboarding. So how are they going to do their job? Like, what is it about the department? How do they contribute to the department? That's really important. So why is onboarding important? 25% of new hires will leave within a year if they're not onboarded well. So they just kind of had an experience of onboarding. 64% of new hires will leave within a year if they have a negative onboarding experience. So a negative onboarding experience is you don't look like you're ready for them. They don't really get the training that they need. They seem like an afterthought. They're wondering, like, what they're doing there. So if that's happening, they're very likely to leave. And the reminder that 31% of employees have quit a job within the first six months. So the work to get them there could be a lot. Could have been you spent a long time recruiting for this person and finally there. Well, that's just the beginning. And now I've got to work to keep them there. Like, especially in this industry, employees have so many choices. Okay, so how do I onboard them to my department and their position? You want to sit down with this person and you want to talk about their job. Make sure they understand the job description. Again, I've seen people leave after a couple of weeks, a couple of months, because they didn't understand the job and it's not what they wanted. So from the very beginning, you're making sure they know what is the job, what is the performance expectations in the job, what are my goals and objectives? So how am I measured? How will you know, how will they know they're successful? And also let them know, when are performance reviews completed? How are merit increases determined? When will they be eligible for an increase? And I say that because I've seen people quit because they thought at the first next performance review, they were going to get an increase. Well, no, the policy stated that they had to wait a year. Well, they didn't get an increase. They didn't know, they thought, right? So again, they've heard all this stuff in orientation, but there's so much that they get in orientation that they forget. So it's up to once they get to the department for that supervisor to reinforce these things for them so that they have realistic expectations. Another thing is their career growth within the department and within the company. That's another thing as you're onboarding them even that you talk about. Explain that, hey, there are many opportunities at this company. Look at Sally, she moved from this to that. Look at this person, they moved from that to that. We have a career ladder for you in your particular area, but if you would like to do something else, that's down the road, you could consider that, right? Because you don't want them to think, this is the only thing I can do here. And if I want to do something else, I got to go, you know? So you want them knowing they have a good career, their whole career at that company. So let's say you recruit somebody, you spend all that effort and time to recruit them. And for whatever reason, they're a really great person. They have good skills, but they're not a good fit for that job. So I've seen managers come to talk to me and say, I want to get rid of Joe because Joe can't do X, Y, Z. And I'm like, well, can he do this and that and that? Did you show up on time? Is he a good team member or whatever? And they're like, oh yeah, he's great, he just can't do this. I said, well, then let's see if we can find him a place. Like, let's don't just throw all that work away and this person away. Let's find a place he might fit in this company. And so people need to know, can they apply for jobs internally? Are you posting your jobs internally? And if you are, how long do they have to be in a position before they can apply? You're not encouraging them to change jobs. You're just saying, we want you here for your career. We're not just hiring you for today. So it's really important that they understand all of that. If you've got a mentor program, explain that to them. If you have criteria outlined on how people get promoted, if you have a career ladder, you need to explain that to them very well. I have seen people be very upset because the way they thought the career ladder worked was not the way the career ladder worked. And so if you take the time to explain it to them upfront, what happens at each point along the career ladder, what is expected of them, what do they get when they reach that milestone, then that will also help retain them. Another thing that's really important to explain upfront to them is how they can get and receive feedback. So let's say somebody starts and something happens that's upsetting to them. I've seen it happen a lot. How do they get their concerns resolved? Do you have any kind of an ethics line, open door policy, any kind of whistleblower policies? Are they supposed to talk to you, their supervisor? Can they talk to anybody? So you want them, they see something to be able to say something and not feel I've got to leave this company because this does not feel right and I don't think this is a good place to work. You want them to be able to find out, to know from the beginning where they can get feedback and support. A couple other ideas that I have seen really be impactful. They seem kind of small, but they really did make an impression on people. And I know that because I did surveys after orientation and onboarding to find out what meant something to people. Having their supervisor or their team have lunch with them on the first day is a great small touch. So they appreciated the effort and the attention. Take them on a walk through the facility if they haven't been through it already. Their key leaders around, introduce them and then also introduce their new hire buddy if you have a new hire buddy program. Those are all things that show, A, I'm prepared for you and B, you're really important and we're happy to have you here. Okay, and also I like to briefly touch on if you have remote employees who are being onboarded and orienting, don't forget about them. They often feel left out. They often feel neglected. So it is difficult for them to sit on onboarding sessions remotely for all day long. It's easier for somebody who's onsite to do that. So you might wanna invite them to part of the orientation by Zoom or Teams and then send links to other things separately. Also, of course, you're gonna send them some swag if you do that for your onsite employees and set up some time. I call it a happy hour, a virtual happy hour to introduce them to their team. Make sure they interact with that team and they feel part of that team so they don't feel like they're isolated on an island by themselves because they're at risk of leaving if you don't tie them in very quickly. You also wanna introduce them if they have customers, introduce them virtually to their customers. And if you're having lunch with a new hire, send them a gift card for lunch. Don't do things that make them feel excluded. And if you have a new hire buddy program, include them and give them a new hire buddy. That will be really helpful for them. So a new hire buddy system, and I've also put this in at a company and it was really, truly effective. A new hire buddy is somebody who is very, very good at their job. They are very supportive of the company and they have a positive attitude. That's really the most important thing. Their job is to make employees feel welcome and answer any questions that an employee might be embarrassed to ask of their supervisor or HR, just some things that you might not think to tell them that they wanna know. And it's an immediate connection to the organization. It's somebody who can kind of look out for them, make sure they get the help that they need. It's not a supervisor who's commenting on their performance. It's somebody who's neutral, who can help them. It has been proven to accelerate productivity and enhance job satisfaction if somebody has a new hire buddy, but you need to have it in writing. It needs to be a formalized system. And again, if you don't have that at your company, this is another thing that does require leadership support. I was lucky at my company. My CEO is the one who wanted to do this. So it was, I had the buy-in, but you've gotta have the buy-in because it's gonna take time away from the core job for that person, whoever's the buddy to help the new hire. All right, they need to know, what do you expect from them? What is the role of the buddy? What is the role of the supervisor? And what is expectations for the new hire? Buddy needs to know what to share. So you need to have a little brief training with the buddy on what it is they're gonna do, define how long the program's gonna last. Ours was for three months. And then you wanna check in with them every now and then to see how it's going. Because some people just don't mesh, right? Nothing wrong with either person. They just don't mesh together. So you might wanna assign the new buddy for the person. And if the buddy does a good job, what we did was we had the new hire do a survey. And if they got a seven out of 10 on the survey, different questions about different things that a buddy's supposed to do, we gave them a gift card. So to thank them for the time and effort, because you can't force somebody to be a buddy. It's not a good idea. They have to volunteer. If they did a bad job, then they just couldn't be a buddy again for a year. And we put them back through training. So a lot of people really enjoy doing that. I cannot express enough the importance of checking in with your new hires. Like you can't just bring them on board, put them out to work, and never ask them how they're doing and how it's going. So from these check-ins, we were able to learn a lot about how well or not so well our company was doing at onboarding new hires. And we made a lot of changes based on this feedback. So HR can definitely conduct these check-ins with the new hire. I recommend doing it at the end of the first week to start, because again, you're in that risk period of where people are still thinking about, did I make the right decision coming here? Is this really the right place for me? So the more you can check in with them and find out how it's going and correct anything that's not going well upfront, the better. This process takes about five minutes to do. So everybody is like, oh, I don't have time. I don't have time. I'm like, well, do you have five minutes? Like you've been on your phone for five minutes. I think you have five minutes that you can do this, right? So you're just asking them, how did things go? How did it go with your pre-hire paperwork? How did your appointments go? You had to go for a lab work or whatever. How did your first week go? Did you get all your questions answered? Did you feel like you were welcome? Did you get introduced to people you need to know? And do you have anything else that you just feel like hasn't been explained or you need further guidance on? Simple as that to do that at the end, especially of the first week, and then you might want to do it at the end of the first month, and at three months, depends on the person depends on the situation but you want to check in with your voice and your remote employees, just to see if there's anything a that you can do right now to help them and be, let's say you find out the person went to get their lab work. And they sat at quest for two hours, waiting on their lab work. Well that's a problem that HR needs to know about, or safety depending on who is managing that program, because then they can work without organization or they might want to find another organization that doesn't make people wait two hours. So things like that you can find out if you take the time to ask. However, it does take some time. I know you guys that don't do a formal onboarding program or thing and it's gonna take a lot of time to do this well, it does take some time doesn't take a lot of time, but it takes some time. It does require that your managers and your leadership buy into this, because it does take some time, and you want to continue to modify and improve. I never thought my onboarding program was at the end state, I always was open to let's see what we can do better. Let's see how we can help people more, you have to be flexible to change it. And what I recommend that you do if you don't have a formal onboarding program now. And you want one you want to develop one, I would monitor, what are your turnover rates now before you have a program. And what is your turnover rate, after you've had the program going and see if you can see any difference, because if you want leadership you have to prove that it's working. So metrics do matter, just like they measure everything, right. HR should measure what they do also, and I always try to show metrics to show the expenditure and the time was worth it because of x. So I would definitely take the time to do that if you are going to implement an onboarding program. I don't have to say a lot about competitive compensation and benchmarking, but I do want to say something about it because that's one of the top five causes of employee job satisfaction is feeling like they are paid fairly. I was in directly in the heavy equipment industry. When we were adjusting compensation on a quarterly basis because of the competitive nature of the environment and if we didn't have a tool to do that. We wouldn't have been able to do that. Right. So it's really important that you have a tool, something like pay scale that you can see what's going on there are surveys you can use a ED has a good benefits and compensation survey that we use. You need to know what's going on in the market, like you can't just bring somebody in and say, well, they're making a lot of money. I'm not going to look at pay again for another year. In some circumstances, you can't do that. You have to, you have to know what's happening in the market, because employees know what's happening in the market because they have friends that do this job. They see people who have job sites, and they talk about compensation, and you can't tell them that they can't talk about compensation, the National Labor Relations Act applies to this, even if you're not union it says you cannot forbid employees from talking about the terms and conditions of employment. That's an unfair labor practice that can get you in trouble. And that's regardless of your unionized status so people will talk and they're allowed to talk, so you need to make sure you know what the market is doing. And also another mistake I've seen is that you worry about what you're paying your people you're recruiting but then you stop worrying about your internal employees. Well that is a way to lose some really good long term internal employees are already there, because they see the wage that's happening from bringing new employees at a higher rate and not adjusting them. So if you're adjusting pay for recruiting, you better be able to adjust internal compensation to make sure that your best employees stay. One thing I recommend doing, because employees often don't know what benefits cost they have no idea what the company pays, and when they find out how much money, you're paying for their benefits for their, especially their medical benefits. Right, because they're only paying a small fraction of that amount, usually. So if you have total compensation statements. You can show them, this is the total value of what you receive by working here, and you want to take the time to explain to them what that means, because a lot of people don't know how to read a total compensation statement so you want to do you know to make sure people understand, what does it mean that I'm receiving this much per hour and how you came up with that number. Okay, so here we go importance of compensation and explaining it to people and total compensation statements employees who perceive their pay as not equitable, just perceive it doesn't mean it's not our 15% lower intent to stay with your employer, and our 13% less engaged at work. So taking the time to know the market and explain it to the employees, how they're being paid competitively will help ensure they stay. Okay. Another thing is career growth. You need to make sure you have good career paths for people like if you're there a technician. You have technician 123. What does it mean to be a tech one tech to three, how do they move through, you just need to make sure people understand her career progression if they're an office environment did they come in as a junior and the move to a manager than a senior, like how does that work. And what does it take to get there. Hopefully your company offers training and development programs, and you encourage people to take advantage of them to move through the, their levels. If you have a mentorship program. That's also very helpful for people in developing their career. During your performance review. A lot of times careers are not talked about performance review time. That is the perfect time to talk to somebody about that. Right. There's also a good time to talk to somebody about the fact that hey you're doing great at this, but you really need to get better at that. So let's talk about some training that we can get you in to get you better at that. That perfect time is when you're doing your either your, you know, twice a year, annually, whatever you do performance reviews, good time to talk about that. And so they also know they have career progression opportunities, you want to make sure that they know that there's a chance for them to do something different if they want to, you know, not everybody wants to, but if they do that there are opportunities. So, always. Also, what I recommend doing is having an individual development plan for everybody. What are they going to work on this year, you know, put some goals, training goals on their, their development plan every year so they feel like they're accomplishing something, and then recognize them when they do achieve that goal. Okay, that's really important I think that's overlooked a lot I really do. I think that oftentimes people hate doing performance reviews so much that they don't take advantage of that time with the employee to really talk about what it is they're interested in doing, and what training might benefit them. All right, next topic is work life balance so post coded. That's really become important, a lot of positions can't offer what flexible jobs right people have to be there at a certain period of time, but there's still some things that you can do that promote work life balance and employees perceive that you're thinking about that you can make sure they use their vacation. Right. Make sure they use their personal days don't have anybody lose vacation, because they didn't take it, you know, if you have a use it or lose it policy the right thing to do is to make sure they get their vacation, you know, make sure your role modeling, you know, if you have a really generous leave plan, but you don't let people take vacation or you make them feel bad about taking vacation, they're not going to do it, and they're going to resent it. So, I'll never forget I had somebody who had a layoff at a company. And the one thing that the person complained about was the fact that they never use their vacation, nothing else. I was like, you guys, let me not take my vacation I lost all that. So, don't be one of those people, you know, don't encourage employees to work on their holidays or vacation, unless they want to some people really want a lot of overtime, like they'll they'll kill it for overtime. That's okay if that's what they want, but make sure those people who want to take vacation do, and you also want to make sure people don't hurt themselves because they work too much. Some people would do that. All right, make sure you set boundaries for people like don't call somebody after hours if you don't have to. And a non exempt employee who's paid hourly. If you call them after hours you're supposed to pay them for that time. They may take the call then and not say a word. But then on the way out the door, they might be you know what you never paid me for that time I worked and then they're filing a claim with the Department of Labor, because you did not pay them for the time you should have and they've got evidence on their phone that you did. So just make sure I would recommend keeping after hours contact at a minimum. And also lead by example, like if you're telling people I really want you to take your vacation, you really should take your vacation, and then you never take your vacation, they're going to feel bad about doing that. So walk the talk. If your, if your company wants to support work life balance more than you need to walk the talk and lead by example. Okay. All right, looking at the time. Okay, we've got 10 minutes, we've got, we've got time I want to leave some time at the end for questions. So, another quick thing is exit interviews, I think they're really valuable. Some of them people are going to just blow smoke but you can really get some great information from exit interviews, because if you want to design effective retention plan right, you can't guess, you got to know. So you can have suggestion programs or open, open forums, you can have focus groups, just to find out hey, why are people leaving the organization. And then you can do exit interviews. In addition, those are really good sources of information about why people leave. You can do them in person, which I think is best before they leave. If they're willing that's a volunteer thing right or if they don't want to do it then send it by email after they leave, because they're more likely to be honest at that point, HR is the person, they should be conducting that because you want them if it was a deal with the supervisor, you want to know that. So that HR is more of a neutral person to ask those questions. So, you might get some really good information about why people are leaving. So another thing you want to do around which will help exit interviews will help with this is you want to track your metrics. When are people turning over when are they leaving, how long were they here before they quit. Was it in the first six months. If so, it could be they weren't onboarded very well. What do you want to track those metrics by turnover reasons by department, and by supervisor, HR can work on that can help track those metrics. Those are super valuable to know, and you can put programs in place to address those. But if you don't know why, then you can't, you can't put programs in place it's going to help. I should go without saying that you should recognize employees and their service, but there are, I've seen too much to know that it's just something that companies normally ordinarily do people want to be recognized for their tenure with your company. In the past, I highly recommend that people are recognized at the first year. Also, not just wait to the fifth year, because people are so much more likely now to leave a job, and especially in the first year, I recommend that you recognize service at the one year mark, then 510 15, but get them through to that one year mark, recognize them when they meet production goals or they finish projects ahead of schedule. Those are all opportunities to say thank you, hats go a long way, people love hats t shirts, put them in the newsletter if they want to be some people don't want to be in a newsletter, you have to be sensitive to that, but it doesn't have to be pay. It can be other ways that you recognize people again, appreciation and support goes a long way for having people stay with you. And finally, I want to talk about the importance of preparing your supervisors. This is a really big deal to me. I've seen this so much in my, you know, 20 plus years in HR that people think just because someone is a really great individual contributor, they're going to be a great supervisor. That is a disservice to that employee who you're promoting. Of course people want not everybody but most people want to advance, most people would love to be a supervisor, most people aren't going to say no if you offer them the opportunity to be a supervisor, but it's not fair to put them in that job and not give them training, because there's so many issues that they're going to deal with that they've never probably even dealt with before, you really need to help them succeed. So they've got to have skills and these are just some of the skills that they need help developing, communications training, communication with difficult employees, delivering bad news, right, managing these difficult employees, like when do I put them on a performance improvement plan, when do I put them on what step of discipline, how does that work. What are some legal issues I need to know, what is ADA, what is ADAAA, what is FMLA, what do I need to know about the EEOC, all of those things are things you don't know unless you're trained. I mean that's just nobody can know that. So how do I motivate employees, how do I motivate somebody who doesn't seem to want to do anything, like what do I do besides fear and intimidation which doesn't work. And how do I personally transition from being a peer of these employees to their supervisor, that is a extremely difficult change to make. I mean these, you can be your drinking buddies or whatever, now you're in charge of them and you've got to discipline them if they don't do something right. So that's really hard for people without training to know how to do that. So I just think that's really super key to retaining employees, because employees leave supervisors more quickly than they leave the company, they're leaving their boss, right. And if you don't provide them that training, many of these people are going to fail, all right. And they may not get fired, but they're going to lose a lot of employees because of it. So that's a failure to me. And again, another thing is, some companies do culture surveys and some don't. You can find a lot about the supervisor management relationship from a culture survey. But if you're going to do a survey, you need to be ready to do something with the results. I've seen companies spend up to, I swear, $250,000 in a very large company on a culture survey and not do a thing with it. It was insane. I mean, you need to be telling people, this is what we heard in the culture survey, this is the good, this is the bad, and here are some plans that we are putting in place to address the bad. So if you're not going to do anything, I always say, if you're not going to do anything with the results, don't do the surveys, because then people just become disillusioned. All right. In closing, I'm going to say, you're going to have a culture no matter what. So if you make no effort at all to shape the culture of your organization, you're going to have one. So it's better to be proactive and design the culture that you want in order to retain employees and your high performers especially. So the fact is, in this industry, there are many really great cultures. There are some really great companies to work for. Your best employees are going to find them, or recruiters are going to find your best employees. So you want to make sure your company is one of those places where it's going to help you profitability-wise, et cetera, to make sure your company is one of those ones that people really want to work in. All right. So in closing, I'm just going to say, this is my company, Keaton HR, and what I do is culture surveys, HR compliance audits. I make recommendations, and if companies want to retain me to help fix them and put fixes in place, et cetera, I do that. I also do supervisor training and development. I've done that for many, many years. Employee retention programs and succession planning, which is something that companies don't do a lot of and should do more of, is making sure that people are ready to move up in the organization without a big gap when somebody leaves. And then just HR project support also. That's what I do. So again, here's my contact information on the screen. If you have any questions about anything I've said or something that you want more clarification on, whatever, just email me or call me, and I'm happy to answer. Okay? All right. Thanks. And we have any questions? I don't see any questions in the chat, but you left your information so they can get a hold of you. Thank you so much to everyone for joining us today, and Cynthia, thank you so much for presenting for us. Thank you. Take care. You too. Thanks. All right. Bye. Bye.

employee retention

HR practices

organizational culture

onboarding processes

work-life balance

supervisor training

compensation

recognition programs

career progression