Leaders: The Warning Siren Has Sounded…It is Time to Up Your Game

If your employees had a ton of options of whom they work for and report to, would they choose you as their leader?  It is a great question and you may be about to find out. In the February 1, 2018 issue of Fortune Magazine, in an article titled “Ready, Set, Jump,” Geoff Colvin told every employee, “For business people looking to jump, now is the long-awaited chance to find better employment and maybe notch a substantial raise.” At this same time, hiQ, a data analytics firm, is mining LinkedIn data and selling it to hiring employers, and telling them which employees on your team are most likely ready and willing to leave you for a new job making more money.

There has never been a better time for one of your employees to leave you. According to Value Line, the U.S. is at a seventeen year low in unemployment. There are 6.1 million job openings that organizations are struggling to fill. For years, the Federal Government considered 5.6 percent unemployment to be full employment. In 2017, they revised the unemployment number for full employment to 4.6 percent. Today, unemployment nationally is 4.1 percent and dropping as I write this article. Among knowledgeable workers, managers and people with bachelor’s degrees, the unemployed are only 2.0 to 2.1 percent of the population. To add to the challenge of keeping good employees, wage inflation is on the rise. Last year in private industry, wages increased 2.6 percent. In some areas of the United States, the numbers get even worse. For Minneapolis, where the labor market is red hot, unemployment is 2.3 percent and last year, wages rose 4.0 percent.

You may be thinking, “I don’t have this problem. I have some employees who may leave, and I will be just fine.” In fact, you may have one employee that is not happy, is not a top performer, causes ill-will and discontent with the team, and you actually hope they will leave you. When hope has not worked, you tried prayer. When prayer did not work, you finally got HR involved and have the employee on a performance improvement plan. However, these are not the employees we are talking about who may leave you. The employees we are talking about are the ones who hiring firms and that your competitors really want; your best employees – the employees who, when they leave you, wound you and your company and bring their new employer a huge gift – the highly engaged employees who are great team players and produce extraordinary results.

If these statistics are not enough to motivate you to ‘up your game,’ consider this statistic from Kiplinger Newsletter: 56 percent of millennials are going to be looking for a new job in the next year.  Now is the time for leaders to raise the bar and up their game.

Here are six tips that will help you build strong relationships with your employees to where they love to come to work for you and your company.

1. Really care: Ensure that every day, your direct reports know that you really care about their personal and professional success. It is a cliché, but it is 100 percent true.  No one cares how much you know or how good your results are until they know how much you genuinely care about them. You tell people you care by asking them questions about them; listening to them; investing time in their development and going out of your way to ensure they are successful.
2. Goal alignment: Are the goals of your organization and department clear to each member of your team? If not, they need to be. It is critical that each team member knows what his/her goals are and how they make a difference to the team and organization’s success. This one key issue, an employee knowing that their work makes a difference to the success of the team, significantly raises the chances that the employee is engaged and loves both their job and working for you.
3. Ensure each team member has a growth and development plan. It may be difficult to have a succession plan for each employee unless your organization is doubling in size each year. But, what is easy to do is ensure employees are growing and developing each year and that you develop a plan with them. They need to continue to grow personally and professionally. If you are able to accomplish this, at the end of the year, they will have some new skills and responsibilities that will make them even more valuable to your organization and the world.
4. Value, appreciate and recognize your employee’s contributions: Everyday, you need to wake up and make a list of the people in your life for which you are grateful.  A great way to think about this is to ask this question, “If I wake up tomorrow morning and none of my team members show up for work, would I miss them?” This one question helps me quickly recognize that I am so blessed by having the support of my team members and clients in my life.
5. Create a unique relationship with a unique employment package. This one is going to be controversial. I know that in corporate America, everything has to be equal. For me, that is like a speaker or consultant that comes in and tells you how to treat/lead millennials. I have two millennials and I am telling you that if you treat all millennials the same, you are not going to be effective as a leader. Some people need to be 100 percent focused in their career and they need to win. Other people need more time off to balance their personal life. Some team members need health care. Other team members want to work part-time or work from home. As a leader, you want the best people who will help your team and the organization win. That is becoming harder and harder to do in this economy without having a unique relationship and a unique employment package.
6. Pay people competitively. If the national average for wage inflation is 2.6 percent and 4.0 percent in a city like Minneapolis that have winters cold enough to make your buns shiver, you need to ensure that you are collecting good wage data annually. This ensures you are competitive and when an employee compares wages to your unique relationship and unique employment package, the total cost to leave is not worth it.

Our very best clients – the ones who score in the top 25% on our employee engagement surveys and are most successful at retaining top talent – are the best at implementing the six tips outlined above and ensuring their best employees have reason to stick around. Now, it is time to take a look at your leadership and these tips.  Is it time for you to up your leadership game?