Retaining Your Talent and Workforce!
Keys to Successfully Reduce Employee Turnover and Absenteeism 

Employees and volunteers always have choices about where and for whom they work for. All workplaces are a collection of people brought together to achieve common goals but each individual has their own unique and personal needs that must be met for work to be fulfilling. If they don’t enjoy their work, have purpose in what they do, or are unable to build strong relationships they will likely leave in time for other opportunities that meet their needs. We serve any organization that understands the value of retaining their talented workforce (whether employees or volunteers) and strives to ensure they minimize employee turnover and absenteeism rates. Organizations that recognize the critical role their leaders and mid-level managers play in this process provide the training and process that help them improve retention numbers. Senior leaders need a management team that can create a positive workplace culture, foster a supportive working environment, and build strong relationships with employees. By partnering with us, you can be confident in your team’s ability to retain top talent and achieve successful outcomes while you have the freedom to steer the ship in the direction you need to go. We help organizations create a fulfilling work experience for their team and build a strong foundation for their future success.

Doug Brown is the Founder and President of Manage2Retain, an Employee Retention Program Provider in Canada and the United States. Doug is passionate about employee retention and believes strongly that employees who enjoy their careers and find fulfillment in their work are more likely to become loyal employees that remain with their organizations for extended tenures. In addition, when their needs and careers are supported, they become strong brand ambassadors advocating for the company and helping to build team morale and strong relationships that have a positive impact on employee retention. Doug believes that there are three core focuses to strong employee retention: cultivating engagement drivers, creating rewarding work experiences, and building a career development plan for every employee. Ultimately, this also contributes to business success through employee growth and development as well as reduced turnover costs and /or loss of knowledge and skills. For the past 10 years, Doug has operated an employee engagement survey company, Engaged2Perform that collected a wealth of data and feedback on employee needs and desires for a rewarding career. Prior to this, Doug served in roles from Supervisor to President, overseeing production, quality control, sales and marketing, administration, distribution, and fulfillment. He has successfully overcome the many challenges involved in building loyal, high-performance teams. Doug believes that mid-level managers are the crucial link between the employee and the organization and are in the strongest position to ensure the employee’s career needs and expectations are met.

Read the Transcript

This is Hugh Ballou welcoming you back to the nonprofit exchange. We’ve been doing this for eight and a half years, and we’ve had so fascinating guests. Today, we’re gonna deal with employee retention. Now. We’re running a business, we’re running a nonprofit, but that’s a business. And we have employees, we have volunteers, we have staff, we have contractors, it’s more costly than any of us know, to replace an employee. So we’re going to talk about the retention, and absenteeism today, and it’s up to the leader. So Douglas, we’re talking to nonprofit leaders and clergy today, and they don’t know you. So tell them a little bit about you and your background. And why do you do this work?

Douglas Brown
Okay, well, thanks, you and pleasure to join you today. And I look forward to interacting with your audience. I’ll step back many years ago that explain a little bit of how I got involved in so you know, when I graduated University back in, well, way back in 1979, I actually worked in the Food and Chemical Industries in various management positions for probably about 25 years. And the last half of that was really in sales positions in different roles, but primarily selling different products and services into the commercial side of the industrial side of the economy. Around 2000, I started a part time business that was involved in employee recognition, so employee recognition products, employee reward products. And I felt then and I still believe now that recognition and appreciation are really one of the cornerstones of engagement, it’s important to recognize and appreciate employees for their effort, their hard work, their achievements, and so on. But really, the the reason I started that business was, I had young children at the time that were getting into their teenage years, and I wanted to teach them a little bit about the business world and help them learn a little bit of money. So those those were the reasons and then around the year 2000, and 272 1007. And 2008, I had come to the realization that there, you know, to motivate people and to retain people, there were more things well beyond recognition. And at that time, engagement was becoming kind of popular. And you heard that a lot about the importance of having engaged employees that are committed, and devoted and motivated and all those things. So the company that I started, was engaged to perform and engaged to perform really was primarily about employee engagement surveys to understand your employees needs to, to realize, you know, what improvements, they were seeking to identify some of their challenges and concerns and goals and dreams and all those things. And so there was a, and that business still operates today. But over this timeframe, we really had an opportunity to collect a wealth of data that, you know, gave us real insights, real true insights into employees, and what their feelings were, what their thoughts were about their careers, and the companies they worked for, and so on. And, you know, so that was that was a, that was a real eye opening experience. And, and what we identified was really about 20 common categories. Now, that’s not to say, and there are very unique differences within those common categories. But those 20 common categories are what we call the key drivers to employees decisions to stay, or to resign. So, and then about, I’m gonna say, a year and a half, two years ago, we started to read and see that there was really increasing challenges with retaining employees. There was many articles written about the great retention, and you and David might have read those of you and so we thought we had something to offer. So we prepared some programs centered around how the manager can better interact with the employee to to focus on those retention drivers to build stronger relationships. And that has brought us where I am today with operating I managed to retain. So that’s that’s a quick overview. You know, to summarize my experience, but my driving passion, I would say is that employees, every employee really should be entitled to work with dignity and respect in their career. And then you know, they are going to be much happier in their personal lives. So

Hugh Ballou
now, let’s get a lens on this problem. How big a problem is, is this retention You know, people leave, used to be, my dad worked a whole career in an organization and then got the gold. But we don’t do that anymore. But the rotation seems to be more often. So why does that happen? what’s at the root of that? And then how does that impact the organization and its functioning? Well, yeah,

Douglas Brown
there’s there’s a lot to uncover there. But definitely, times are changing. You know, back in the 50s, and 60s, when we grew up, I guess, a lot of people didn’t work for maybe one company for their career, or maybe one or two, I would say the average now is probably eight to 10. career changes over a lifetime. And there’s different drivers for that I think, business world has changed. You know, I don’t think there’s maybe as much loyalty from the company side is there was at one time, you know, if there’s downsizing or change and restructuring to deal with the business issues of the world, often employees, you know, can be out of a job, or they can have a changed role, or something like that. And so those one things, I will say also, now that there’s many different generations in the workforce, and I think some of the younger generations definitely do have a different approach, different beliefs about work, different attitudes, maybe about work. And not to say that they’re wrong, but they’re just different than really what we grew up with. So if if an organization isn’t meeting some of their needs and expectations, they will look out elsewhere. And that’s, that’s been well written about and well documented. And there was a second part of your question you that I may have missed, but well, it How big is that this problem?

Douglas Brown
Oh, it’s it’s a tremendous problem, not only in the business world, but I suspect that nonprofit organizations are well as well are struggling with this. Just to give you a sense of the economic impact, it’s been said now that turnover cost the US economy about 700, between 700 and $800 billion annually. So that’ll give you some sense of how big this challenge is, and how big this problem is. And just a further note, we recently ran some poll and studies and what we saw was that many organizations are finding it hard to keep employees, even 18 months of time, so a year, year and a half. And, you know, it was about 25% of the respondents indicated that they’re losing people within 18 months. So that that’s a real eye opener to that, you know, when you’re investing money and training employees and trying to help them help themselves as well as help the company and you’re putting that time and effort and resources into that you’re really not getting your money back. If somebody leaves in a year, year and a half.

Hugh Ballou
Let’s let’s focus on we could talk about that topic all day. That’s a big deal. But let’s focus on the person of the employee. Now, you talked about the company valuing, and the employee the loyalty from both sides. And I think that’s changed on both sides over the years. But the statistics for nonprofit leaders specifically, is the burnout rate is before the pandemic was 45%. And some of the surveys and 75% were looking at the exit door. So their personal needs weren’t being met, they were being driven. And they were reaching a burnout point. And as you know, the nonprofit leader works for the board. And sometimes boards don’t value the personal needs. So speak about this, this driver, maybe it goes back to even the hiring process. So what do we do about the personal needs of the employee? And why is that important? Yeah,

Douglas Brown
they are important. And, you know, I think that when you talk about burnout, I think when people are engaged in they’re motivated, and they’re enjoying their work, I think burnout is still going to happen, but probably at a lower level, it’s not going to be as much because people enjoy their work, they are fulfilled in their work. But when they are facing drudgery and tasks that they don’t enjoy, and they’re not communicating perhaps with their boss, or they don’t have a chance to work with their strengths or the experiences and what they expected, then it becomes more of drudgery. And I think the potential for burnout is much higher. But I want to elaborate a little bit on the unique needs because all of us are unique in our own way. And we call these intrinsic factors and you know, but we all have our own desire was a goals and needs and interests and expectations and so on. And, but they also, every one of us approaches our relationships differently. And some are more communicative or extroverted, while others are maybe more shy or introverted. And again, you know, everyone has a different personality to some degree. And then you can even look at things like strengths and abilities, and how they relate to how people approach their jobs and organize their work and so on. So, you know, really, I think that’s an important thing that the managers and senior leaders have to understand is that those unique drivers and unique keys have to be met, because they often control the emotions and feelings about how what someone thinks about their job, what someone thinks about their careers. And when organizations put in place generic programs or corporate wide programs that are designed to kind of benefit the the employee, and often they do, and I’m not critical of a benefits, but many times they don’t address and support and meet the needs, those individual personal needs of the employee. So I hope that I’ve explained that properly.

Hugh Ballou
I think so. And David and I both have been on both sides of this equation. How do we David?

David Dunworth
Absolutely, you know, and what you just alluded to was pretty important that that oftentimes, those one size fits all things are doomed to failure from the onset. And I think, you know, when it comes to stuff like that, what kind of role does the manager have to play in that thing? Is he following the corporate, you know, mandate? Or is he, you know, are she responsible, more so to the employee? Can you elaborate on that a little bit?

Douglas Brown
Yeah, I will. David, thanks. And it’s a good question. It’s one that maybe there isn’t an easy answer to, but I’ll do my best here. I think, first of all, the managers are put in place by senior and leaders and owners, to often manager department or managing a group of employees and generate results. And, you know, there’s nothing wrong with that, I think the managers and their department have to generate results to to be successful to achieve the goals and to achieve the objectives of the company and help them grow and be profitable. So there’s certainly that side of the equation, but it really boils down to how they do that and how they lead. And you know, if they’re leading with their power and authority, to achieve results, or if they’re leading with the interests of their employees, and empathy and caring, and support, to kind of motivate and drive high performance and build loyalty and trust and those kinds of things. It’s two separate worlds and, but if they, if they can lead with that, the second part of that equation with trust, and motivation and loyalty, they can achieve the same results, but at the same time, they can they can bring their their employees with them. And by that, I mean, having strong followers who are committed to the objectives of the company, to the objectives of the department, you know, to the mission of the company, and so on. And just to elaborate a little bit further on the manager’s role. When we look at those key drivers of employee retention, not just an example, as I mentioned earlier, employee recognition still is today, very important to appreciate employees for their effort and their achievements. But every employee likes to be recognized differently. Some are shy and introverted and don’t don’t want to go up on stage with a massive audience clapping and things like that. So they might require a more personal thank you note, or, or perhaps a dinner out or something like that. But again, who’s who’s responsible for that recognition? And often it’s the manager, because they’re in the position to know what that employee has achieved, what work they put into something, you know, what they maybe they’ve gone above and beyond or those kinds of things and those, so it’s often the manager that controls and influences that recognition. And that’s just one of several examples, where the manager really is in the driver’s seat to influence and control those, those those those things.

David Dunworth
But yeah, I would highly, highly agree with that. And, you know, there’s a lot of that whole employee employer relationship has changed basically, because of COVID. And the way things have, you know, evolved over time. You know, and you see stuff on online that says, you know, that well, employees don’t leave companies they leave their manager. Oh, You know, and that’s that’s the probably has, you know, some real weight to it. But when you look at it from the manager standpoint, there’s got to be some, some fundamental three to three things that have got to be the managers role in retaining those employees. Can you elaborate on that a little bit?

Douglas Brown
Yeah, I will, David, thanks. Um, I would say there are three core things that we’ve identified, and they encompass all of those main, or those 20 categories and drivers that I mentioned earlier. The first one is that I think the employee is in the strongest position to cultivate employee engagement. And there’s many different employee engagement drivers. I think I had a list here I could share with your audience, but recognition was one of them. So that’s one you can have autonomy is another one, everybody likes to have some independence in their work and some autonomy in their work. They don’t want to be maybe micromanaged. If you wanted to use that word. You know, certainly they like feedback, employees want strong communication, they want strong, interactive communication, where they have input, and they can discuss challenges and problems with their, their manager or leader. Another thing is to be treated with respect and dignity, you will oftentimes when there’s a problem or an issue, you don’t want to see the manager, perhaps becoming too critical or too demanding or something like that. So that’s another one. You know, purpose and meaning is also important. Again, some of these things are more important to employees than others. But, you know, some people, they want to work with purpose, they want to work with meaning. People like to be in on what’s going on within the organization, if there’s change that’s being restructured and things like that, they like to know, well, how is this impacting me? Or how is it affecting me, and my role, and, you know, you have to be careful with that. Because sometimes, if the role shifts, and you ask employees to do something different, all of a sudden, you hear well, that’s not what I signed on for. And so these kinds of things. So all at all, in total, um, you know, I could mention some other ones, like relevance and measurement, and, you know, you know, soliciting ideas from employees getting their input into problem solving. And then you have a series of emotional needs like a manager, showing that they support the employee and care for the employee working conditions, impartiality, and fairness, mastery and growth, everybody likes to grow and develop. So, there’s about, well, there’s several different emotional and personal drivers that are part of that employee engagement. The second one, David, is what we call the employee experience. And everybody wants to enjoy their work experience. So that can really relate to, you know, their strengths, do they have an opportunity to work with their strengths, I think it’s important to define really, what would be a rewarding experience for the employee to just have some discussions with them, try and understand what they’re looking for in their work and their career. And then you can try and tailor the work a little bit to kind of meet those, those needs and expectations. And it’s, it’s not only defining what they’re seeking, but also exploring some of the work roles and responsibilities. And some of the metrics that are measuring that, to make sure that they’re comfortable with that they understand what’s expected of them, and their work role. And maybe if they’re challenged, or if they’re focused, they might need some training, or they might need some support. So those things are part of that work experience as well. And then lastly, we really feel that, and this has been shown in a lot of our work and studies that employees that don’t have a chance to grow and develop and move towards their career goals. Ultimately, they’re probably going to look for something else. So we always encourage the managers to to help the employees, they can help them in the creation of a career development plan. Now, that’s not to mean that the manager does all the work and everything. It’s actually the reverse. It’s the employee that that does the work and trying to define what they’re looking for, what direction they’re trying to go with their career, what what work interests them, what is their their passions, and what steps do they need to take to get to that place and the manager acts as a conduit or support to try and, you know, assist where needed to, to do that. So there’s those three courts and cultivating engagement drivers, building rewarding work experiences, and helping the employees with their career development plan.

Hugh Ballou
That’s, that’s amazing. So I’m gonna piggyback on what David said. At earlier, he said many times people, people don’t leave a company, they leave the leader. And so one of the things that Steve Jobs did walk around, and he spent time with people and he empowered people, he also said, we don’t hire people and tell them what to do, we hire people, train them, and then they tell us what to do. Because the expected the value of their perspective and their skills, which means you got to hire right to begin with. So it’s sometimes it starts there. But talk about, you know, leadership and from from our training and supervision is based on relationship. If you have a relationship, then people are going to, like the conductor, I’m a musical conductor. If the orchestra respects the conductor, they play as you intend, if they don’t you play they play just as you and you can’t do, you can’t direct everything. So the relationship piece comes through regular intervention, regular conversation, speak about that piece a little bit, and why it’s important.

Douglas Brown
Okay. Yeah, I agree. 100%. And to me, there’s really, when you look at the non financial reasons why employees sometimes will leave or resign, I think there’s two keys to that. And one is the relationships with their manager, but also with their colleagues. And then the other is I mentioned earlier, and we talked a little bit about those, you know, emotions and feelings, how they feel about how they’re being treated, what their experiences like, or they’re being recognized. But in terms of relationships, it is critical to have relationships that are founded on trust, that are interactive and open, where they can communicate and understand each other understanding is a key to relationships. I think if the managers and leaders are able to have regular one on one conversations with employees, they’re in a position to better understand their needs, support those needs. And that strengthens the relationship. Because it’s showing empathy. It’s showing caring. And those those are the cornerstones are the keys to building building strong relationships and communication. And those those are the things that I think help or leaders and managers and strengthening, strengthening their relationships.

Hugh Ballou
So we need to take an objective view of the risks of whether you’re going to lose some key personnel. I had a friend that ran a really high level business, and he called me one day says, I need you to come work with me. So I said, Why is it I had a remote salesman, resign with a fax, and I didn’t know anything was wrong. So send him a fax and said, Okay, I quit. So sometimes we isolate ourselves as leaders. So we don’t really know what’s going on. We haven’t done what you just talked about, in building the relationships and having conversations and then we could spot the signals. So how do we know that we’re at risk of losing some key people?

Douglas Brown
Yeah, I’ve heard similar stories from from time to time. And you know, there’s different ways, you know, I think surveys are certainly important, because you can get some feedback, I think those one on one conversations, or even group conversations, can can raise some some information, give you some insights into that, we have a tool that we work with, it’s called our retention risk analyzer. And really what it is, and is an assessment of those 20 key drivers, in terms of what employees are thinking about those drivers that really affect their decisions to stay or to leave. exit interviews is another one, I think, exit interviews. It’s a little bit about the horse is already out of the barn, so to speak, you know, the person’s already made a decision to leave. And you’re asking to give us insight of maybe what went wrong or why. And I think it’s a little bit too late. So I would I would caution against that, not to say that they can’t provide some insights. But the other thing is stay interviews, do you’ve heard that term, perhaps where, you know, periodically, a manager will sit down with him once a year or something and, and you know, ask the employee, what, what, what is it you need to stay here, what keeps you working here, what you enjoy, and our ideas are to go a step beyond that and have more regular conversations. But those are three or four different things. And it was another point that just escaped me, but it’ll probably probably come back to me about about that.

Hugh Ballou
Most of those systems don’t care if you’re in a nonprofit or church or synagogue or business. You know, the highest dysfunctions are the hiring process because we don’t hire the right way. And then creating expectations for the position and then the other other, the assimilation and then creating expectations and then you got something to have conversations around in the other dysfunction is is the annual review. You know, I’ve never seen so many bad procedures and everybody’s nervous about it. And it’s a, it’s not a win win, it’s basically a lose lose, because everybody, now we could spend a whole whole workshop on any of these themes. I mean, this is a big topic. And it impacts the how we function. So David and I are gonna talk a minute about our community for nonprofit leaders where we offer offer resources for his hard leading nonprofits, and we need the camaraderie of community and also need some other other support that we know you know, we need. So before we do that, your website is manage to retain with the two being the number, man it’s cracked, number two retain.com. So if people go to the website, what was a fine?

Douglas Brown
Well, fine, we feel a pretty good overview about who we are and what we do. There’s some information there on the business case, regarding employee turnover, and also absenteeism. And just what the costs are, I think it’s, it’s, it’s outlined in, you know, certainly there’s direct costs involved, but there’s many different indirect costs involved, that people don’t often recognize or realize or, or calculate. And, you know, quite frankly, those indirect costs can be often more than the direct costs. So there’s a little bit of information there that explains that it explains our services and solutions, what we feel we can offer to businesses and, and nonprofit organizations in terms of helping their managers strengthen their relationships, and, you know, build, build the positive emotions and feelings that employees have towards their career. If they get too many negative feelings, then they’re, they’re often likely to look elsewhere search for another job. So there’s that and then there’s some contact information as well, that is listed on the website.

Hugh Ballou
I mentioned before we got on here that those of us who are old gray hair guys have a lot of wisdom to share. I like to say I’m an expert at leadership because I made all the mistakes. So David and I, David’s the board chair of supervision, Lucia Foundation, and we have a very robust community of leaders. And today, David, one of the people, we have these group sessions every week where people network and help each other. And we have a theme of the day and so the leadership upgrade was our our thought for today in our channel, David, I thought it was really inspirational. And I’ve been doing this a long time, and I come away from every session, just encourage so why should people join this community?

David Dunworth
Well, you know, you’re right, today’s, Douglass did a fine job in reminding me, you know, and I was in management and executive leadership for a long, long time before I got into the other side of the world. And, and yeah, there things have evolved and things have changed. But you know, our community and center vision community is our kind of social media that’s not a social media channel. It’s a networking and collaborative arena for leaders in, in any field, really, we focus sure on nonprofit and clergy, but you know, what, everybody runs a business, they just, you know, they call it something different. The value of our community is networking, learning from each other, sharing with each other. And we have a lot of tools that are available for nonprofit leaders, nonprofits, staff, business leaders, who are interested in giving back to the community and so forth. And it’s a great place, you know, and if you have, I’d like to invite you to actually participate in our community. And if you have information that you wanted to share with our community, we put together a monthly news. Well, we don’t call it a newsletter, we call it updates, because it’s like a non-newsletter, and we’d be more than happy to put a guest contributor piece of content on there for you that you can share with your folks use it as a marketing asset, but you also embarking in parting wisdom upon our group, and that is always beneficial to everybody concerned. So, you know, we encourage both a freed there is a free membership and then there’s a paid membership. The free membership has a bundle of valuable content. The influencer membership has even more content that’s specific to them only and our communities growing constantly. But we’re always looking for that piece of content that can make somebody’s life different. And so I encourage you to take a good solid look at us and you know, if you want to spread your nasan spread your content, it’s easy enough to send it to us just send it to David at center vision leadership.org.

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