ROBERT STEWART, NOVEMBER 23, 2016
So you’ve finally hired and trained some high quality employees who can lead your company in the future. But how do you hold onto them? While compensation is key, a more important factor, says business executive coach Craig Juengling, is keeping employees engaged in what they do. Juengling, a former hospital administrator and owner of Juengling and Associates, offers these tips for locking down your best and brightest.
- Show that you care.It’s important to show your employees that you care about them both professionally and personally, Juengling says. Demonstrate to your employees, whether through actions or conversations, that they are important to your organization’s success. That doesn’t mean the relationship has to develop into a deep friendship, though. “We just need to meaningfully demonstrate that we care about the person, not just demonstrate that we care about the employee and their efficiency and effectiveness,” he says.
- Use strategic development.
Improving employee performance is critical to any business. But not every employee should be developed using the same methods. “How you develop the high performer is different than how you develop the high potential employee,” he says. It’s important to come up with a specific and strategic growth strategy for each employee, Juengling notes. - Make their work meaningful.Back in his hospital administration days, Juengling used to make the rounds in different offices, including the billing department, which had the dreadful task of rounding up payments from patients and insurance companies. Juengling would spur those workers on by reminding them that their collection efforts were vital to keeping the hospital open. “You have to connect them emotionally to the mission of the organization through the work that they do.” Keep in mind: Turnover is significantly less in a highly engaged workforce, Juengling says.
- Keep a continuous dialogue.Bosses should always maintain a continuous performance dialogue with their employees, Juengling says. Annual reviews are a good start, but the conversations must keep going beyond that. “Even with annual reviews, you should be regularly talking with your employees about how they’re doing—the positive contributions that they make, as well as the opportunities for them to improve,” he says.
- Meet their basic needs.Things like employee engagement and continuous dialogue are important. But that doesn’t mean money isn’t. “If you’re not meeting somebody’s basic needs, frankly, a lot of times it doesn’t make a lot of difference as to how you’re doing” as a boss, Juengling says. “You can compensate for it, but you can’t necessarily compensate for the lack of compensation long-term.” Once you get past compensation—and any other basic needs the employee might have—then you can focus on making sure the employee has meaningful work, Juengling says.