Speaking and Communicating Podcast

Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating Podcast.

I am your host, Roberta Angela.

If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning into.

Communication and soft skills are crucial for your career growth and leadership development.

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Now, let's get communicating.

Now, let's get communicating with Douglas Brown who goes by Doug all the way from Canada.

Hi, Doug.

How are you, Roberta?

It's a pleasure to join you here this afternoon and chat a little bit about our subject.

It's a pleasure for me to have you on our show today.

We had a chat last time and I thought you definitely need to come back.

But before we get into that, please tell us a little bit about yourself.

I've been involved in employee workforce solutions for many years.

I initially started my career back in the food industry.

That's going quite a ways back now.

But from there, I kind of got involved in the world of sales.

And around the year 2000, Roberta, I started a business involved with employee recognition.

And that grew and it was run mostly as a part-time business to help our kids learn a little bit about the business world.

But it progressed and grew.

And eventually we started another business called Engage2Perform that was focused primarily on employee engagement surveys.

And we had a chance through that business to do a real deep dive into employees' needs and their challenges and some of the disconnects and concerns they have in the workplace.

And then along in the 2020 or 2021, when there was a lot of information being written about the Great Resignation, we felt we could use some of that data to offer solutions to business organizations that were struggling with retaining their talent or were seeing high turnover rates or high absenteeism rates.

To help them better understand the needs of employees and how they can maybe address those needs to create more rewarding careers.

Right.

Let's go back.

So you started this kind of work more than 20 years ago, but it seems as though the focus on employee well-being and being interested in what employees are looking for became more of a recent thing.

How did you have the foresight to start way back then in 2000?

It was started with a vision that felt that recognition and valuing employees was very, very important in the workplace, and it can help with performance, it can help with retention, it can help with teamwork and all kinds of things.

But once we got involved in that, and I still believe to this day that recognition and appreciating employees and valuing employees is a cornerstone in employee engagement, we also began to recognize that there were several other factors, things like autonomy and teamwork and morale and being able to submit ideas and have your opinions heard and discussed and things like that, that really created the engagement that businesses were seeking.

So that was really the genesis, I guess, that really began around 2008 about trying to explore and understand and discover all the different elements that really created a highly engaged, motivated and loyal employee.

And then that progressed on to where I am today with the new business Manage2Retain that is solely focused on really helping organizations retain their talent and improve that loyalty.

Exactly.

And when you think about all the research that has been done regarding if you engage your employees and you treat them this way, productivity increases for the business, was that research already existing when you started or is it something that you just came across along the way?

Because it's more available now, like everybody knows.

Yeah, it is true.

I think when we first started in the early 2000s, it was a new concept.

Employee engagement was certainly new and it began to get a lot of traction and discussion at that point because people were really trying to understand, well, how do we motivate our employees?

How do we build productivity, ensure that they're performing at their best?

And so the term engagement started to come around in the early 2000s and really was related to, you know, where you get the employees' vested commitment to really perform at their very best.

They're more active in the company goals.

You know, they're more inclined to submit ideas for improvement.

They're more engaged with their team and the work roles that they have responsibility for.

They're more likely to go above and beyond and all those kind of things.

But there definitely has been more research in the last, I would say, five to ten years as we better understand the workplace and better understand the issues in the workplace.

And just as a further comment on that, the workplace is always changing.

And I think over the last three or four years, there's even been more changes.

And by that, I mean, I think the pandemic has really affected the workplace today, and we're starting to see the working from home and hybrid models.

I think some of the younger generation is not only looking for, but in some cases demanding more work-life balance in their work.

They're concerned about mental health and stress and burnout.

You know, and I suspect in another five to seven, eight years, there'll be more issues in the workplace.

It's ongoing and it's dynamic.

Which begs the question, I started my first corporate job in the 90s, so I've seen major changes.

Do you think looking at what's going on now, we come from a generation of, oh, please, corporate, give me a job.

I promise I will do my best to.

I also have the power to determine and say, are you good for me?

Yeah, true, true.

Yeah, so I think you're right.

People are looking at their roles differently today.

You know, they want to know how it's going to help them and why it's important to them.

And this could be purpose and meaning.

It could be their career objectives, their growth and their learning that they want to have.

So there's a number of different things that really play a role in that.

And so it's almost like there's this shift in power of it was always the corporations owning the power.

And now it has shifted to the other side as well of employees saying I also can make a decision on this transaction.

Yeah, it's true.

And employees have a choice as well.

They have a choice of who they want to work for and why they want to work there.

And if they're not having their needs met or if the career position isn't maybe meeting their expectations, they're much easier today in looking at all right, well, what are my alternatives?

Is there another company that maybe better aligns with my values and my strengths and these kind of things?

I will say I think the older generations maybe for whatever reasons, not to say that they wouldn't leave for a better opportunity, but in many cases, they maybe weren't as quick to move if the position wasn't really what they expected.

So the power has shifted a little bit, and I think that there's many more opportunities out there that employees can pursue.

There's a new digital workplace out there.

There's the gig economy.

There's all kinds of things.

So I think that that gives maybe a little more power to the employees in some of these cases.

And knowing that, do you think leaders are becoming more aware and therefore moving with the times?

Because we always hear this whole thing of, oh, you know, at exit interviews, employees always say, oh, my name is not the number one reason I'm leaving, it's relationship with my leader.

So are they realizing that, hey, wait a minute, we don't have as much power as we used to have in retaining talent.

There are all these other competing options.

Are they becoming aware and are they catching up with the trend?

I think they are slowly becoming aware.

And I think that's been forced by things like high turnover and over and maybe performance issues and challenges.

You also see mergers and acquisitions where it changes the workplace culture and these kind of things.

It's an interesting question, and I don't have the answer 100%, but what I'll say is this.

I've seen studies and just some just recently that indicated they asked managers and leaders, how well are you doing in meeting some of the soft skills that are necessary to motivate employees?

Things like empathy and caring and understanding and communication and these kind of things.

And they asked the leaders, first of all, to rate themselves.

And often they would rate themselves as doing maybe around 65, 70, 75% of success or rating themselves in that category ranges a percentage.

But then they would ask the employees the same question, how well are your leaders doing in terms of empathy, communication, listening, understanding, caring, all those soft kind of skills.

And often you'd see the employees rate them at lower scores, like down in the 30, 35% range.

So there's certainly a disconnect there.

I think there's a discrepancy there that can be addressed.

And I think as senior leaders become more aware of these issues and understand that it's so important in today's workplace, I think that'll be a bit of an impetus to kind of help them move forward with these challenges.

I hear those cases a lot.

In fact, I had a guest.

He's from my home country, South Africa.

He's a leadership coach.

And he says, even when he was a leader, he thought, oh, when it comes to my team, they will rate me almost close to 100 when it comes to trust.

And they rated him 50 or less, and he was devastated.

That's true.

There's a disconnect.

You think I'm doing my best and they're not receiving it that way.

Yeah, it's puzzling in some ways, and it can be frustrating.

There's no doubt about it.

But I think it just puts an emphasis on the need to have some mechanisms in place and some feedback vehicles or tools in place to really hear your employees and listen to the employees and what their concerns are, because we're all human.

Sometimes we think we're doing better than we actually are.

And that's why, as I said, it's just important to talk to employees about it and see how well things going.

What could I do differently?

And how can I improve to better meet your needs and these kind of solutions?

So you say there are three core needs of retention.

What are those?

Yeah, I would list the three core needs as, first of all, employee engagement.

And we mentioned that a little bit earlier.

But back in our Engage2Perform days, we had a chance to, from all the data that we'd collected for years and years and years, we had a chance to kind of collate that and organize it and categorize it into 20 main retention drivers.

And of those 20, there's about 17 or 18 that are core engagement drivers.

And we listed those further or further broke those down into personal engagement drivers and emotional engagement drivers.

Those are things, like I mentioned earlier, recognition, purpose and meaning, teamwork and collaboration, autonomy, and the list goes on.

And I think to help leaders really get a strong understanding of what the employees are looking for and being able to meet and drive high engagement, they have to have a sense of understanding of those key retention drivers from the employee engagement standpoint.

The second one, Roberta, is related to the employee experience.

And we all like to have a rewarding and fulfilling employee experience or work experience, but oftentimes the managers don't, he or she doesn't always really know what is a rewarding experience for an employee.

What are they looking for?

And they're not mind readers, and they shouldn't be expected to be mind readers.

But at the same time, if you're able to take some time and talk to the employee, how would they define a rewarding work experience?

What would it mean or what would it look like to them?

And you get some clues, you get a better understanding.

And then if you're able to act on some of those things, you can help and work towards building a more rewarding experience.

And oftentimes, they won't be able to do everything, but they don't always have to do everything.

If they can concentrate on two or three or four main core items that are really important to the employee, they have a chance to really make a difference.

So that's the second one.

And the third one is really centered around career development and growth, Roberta.

And it's important that every employee has a career development plan, so they know what direction they're going within the company.

And the career development plan should be something that they aspire to.

It's something that they are working towards.

They want to achieve for whatever reasons.

There are certainly personal reasons or unique reasons to them that they want to achieve certain goals or work in a certain responsibility or role.

And I think the career development plan is often, it is the responsibility of the employee, but at the same time, the manager can help and support the employee in not only creating the development plan, but making sure that it's coming to fruition.

They can help maybe introduce to another manager where an employee is seeking to work, could be somebody that wants to work, is very customer service oriented, and yet they're in an administrative role.

So you could maybe introduce them to the manager of the customer service department.

Another example would be they might have to get some training to move in that direction in their career, and the manager might be able to support them in getting training.

So that's the third core element, is helping employees get a career development plan in place that they buy into, they're engaged with, and they see a future for themselves with the organization.

It sounds to me like you said, leaders are not expected to be perfect or do everything, but seeing some of those things come to fruition will definitely make the team members think, hey, wait a minute, this is a wonderful place to work for.

If I say something, my leader listens.

It might not always be done all the time, but doing something and even actually asking the question, what would you like to see happen in our work environment, I think means a lot to the employees rather than just being told, do your job and go home.

Yeah, you're absolutely right.

It's just showing that you care a little bit about that employee.

It's showing that you understand the employee.

It's showing that you're willing to support that employee, achieve some of their goals.

And all of those things help create a stronger experience and build loyalty, build relationships and all those things.

And so when they get the call from the recruiter that's saying, hey, I have another career opportunity for you, maybe they're less likely to say, hey, tell me more about it.

They might respond with, you know, I'm quite happy with where I am right now.

So thank you.

Oh, but it's more money, Doug.

Are you sure you don't want to listen?

Well, money certainly can entice some people to make a career move.

It's definitely important.

I mean, our cost of living is going up.

We see higher costs in gasoline and food and many other things.

But at the same time, our studies show that given even the importance of money, it's not always the reason that employees leave.

There's many other reasons with culture and relationship with the manager.

And the other comment I'll maybe make on money is that, you know, after you accept that higher pay, then the reality sets in about, do I enjoy my work?

Do I enjoy my team?

Do I enjoy the relationship with the manager?

Am I satisfied?

Am I growing?

Am I developing?

And those things start to become major factors again.

So it's not always about the money.

Important as it is, yes.

There's a lot of more factors that make you happy at work.

And we've mentioned relationship building a lot with your manager.

When you coach your clients, what are some of the key elements that go into a leader building a better relationship with the employees?

You know, I think the key, Roberta, is really that one-on-one connection.

And if you can give your employees some time where you can just sit down, the two of you, and have some discussions.

We offer some guided conversations that are available for managers and employees, but it enables them to get to better know the employee, to better understand some of the employee's needs, to communicate better.

The employee has an opportunity to express concerns or challenges that they're facing, maybe roadblocks that they're dealing with.

And all of those things, when they're discussed, and you know, there's some dialogue around there, the employee begins to feel that their voice is heard.

And then that builds trust, and it helps build the relationship.

So we really encourage just one on one time, you know, where you can sit down privately and quietly and have a discussion about their work role, how it's going, you know, the challenges they're facing, what they're seeking as they move forward in their career, you know, all these kind of things that really strengthen their relationship and build trust.

As an employer, if you're given the chance to have a one-on-one with your leader and express your concerns, are there moments where you think, if I say too much, it might jeopardize my job, my promotion, the relationship here?

It's true, it could.

I think that employees do need a voice.

If they have some real concerns, they should be able to voice those concerns.

And I think if the manager is not willing to accept some comments or some areas that could be improved or areas they might need to grow, I think that's going to harm the relationship.

And ultimately, they'll maybe look for something else.

I think it has to be presented professionally.

You can't just always come in with negative comments.

I don't like this, and why is someone doing that?

Because that kind of wears a little thin after a while.

But if it's approached professionally, and with the intent to really be of service to the employee, and the employee is struggling with something and really would like a solution to that, and they're willing to have some discussions around it, and the manager might not be able to do anything.

But if they say, well, listen, I can't do anything on this right now, but here's what I'd like to try and work towards as we move forward, I think sometimes that's enough.

Again, it shows that caring and empathy for the employee.

And can I as an employee come to you as my boss and say, Doug, I'm not happy about this, so this doesn't make me comfortable.

Can I put forward a suggestion or is that not the time to do so and wait for you to come up with a potential solution?

Yeah, I think, you know, in an open and transparent relationship that's built on trust and communication, I think that opportunity is there.

I think it's always there because you have that relationship.

If that relationship is not strong, I do see that employees would be nervous or uncomfortable about approaching a manager and talking to them about certain things.

But at the same time, if that can't improve or if they're not given that voice, over time, I think that leads to dissatisfaction.

So it's not always the case that employees are given the opportunity to speak openly and freely.

But I think if they're really interested in keeping a valued employee, that should be what they're working towards or moving towards, because that ultimately is what's going to maybe make that decision for the employee, do I stay or do I go?

Right.

And what is the ROI on retaining your talent instead of having this high stock turnover?

Yeah, that's a good question, Roberta.

And there's two answers I would have to that.

One, first of all, if you look at the cost involved, we always describe it as you have direct costs.

So you've got hiring costs, recruitment costs, ads costs, interview time, these kind of things that the first definite numbers that costs are associated with losing an employee.

But you also have many indirect costs.

And those include things like overtime.

They include, you know, maybe there's a drop in productivity.

Maybe there's quality issues.

Maybe there's impact on remaining employees that are asked to pick up the load, and they get frustrated and morale drops and things like that.

So there's many, many indirect costs that are also associated with that.

And I think, you know, often the indirect costs are just as much or more, significantly more in some cases, than the direct cost.

So when you look at the ROI and really take that whole picture into focus, then you can kind of better examine what ROI you would be able to achieve if you were able to reduce your employee turnover by say 15%, 10%, maybe 20%.

It all depends on, you know, the retention strategy that you put in place and how effective you are in building out that retention strategy and making it successful.

But we've seen cases where people have realized 25% reduction.

In other cases, it's been lower.

But I think even at low levels, you know, maybe 10%, you know, depending on the cost of the programs and everything, organizations can achieve an attractive ROI.

And when you see those changes, those positive changes, what do you think is the one key element that made that company adopt the training you guys gave them, the coaching, and that's why they saw those results?

Sometimes we say, Oh, no, they got trained, and then they went back to the old ways.

Yeah, it's true.

And I think training is one element that's important.

But I think, you know, in order to change habits and in order to change behaviors, I should say, it's an ongoing kind of process.

And I think the training, you know, good, strong training and education is a starting point.

But then if you could put processes in place along the way, and we have some and there's others out there that really enable, let's say, managers to have more interactive one on one discussions with their employees.

It's that regular process that builds up the skills and the new behaviors within employees that kind of translate into the success that you want.

And another thing I'll comment on, Roberta, is we actually just wrote an article on this, and we call it the Triad of Success.

And there's three core players or participants in building a strong employee retention strategy.

And the first is the senior leaders and owners, because they really set policy, they invest the monies, they build strategy, they determine the vision of the company, these kind of things, they build the culture of the company.

So they play a very critical role.

And I think it's important for them to say, look, retention is a priority in this organization.

We hire and recruit talented people, and we want to retain them.

So it really starts at the top, so to speak.

I think the second element is the HR department, and the HR also has a key role to play.

They're busy people with payroll and hiring, but they also can arrange training and support for managers.

They can run surveys and collect information that gives them pulse of what's going on in the workforce and what the issues are to help understand trends and things like that.

And then the third core element or party, I would say, is those mid-level managers.

The he or she who is in the manager position has to have an understanding of their role in the process.

They have to have the skill set required to deliver the desired results, and eventually they should be held accountable for retention of their employees.

So that might be of interest as well to your listeners.

Yes, because research has shown that it certainly improves productivity and leads to greater ROI.

Thank you so much, Doug, for being here today.

Any last words before we ask for your website details?

I can't think of any right now, but people are welcome to talk to me, and it's been a pleasure to join you here this afternoon, Roberta, and I hope I've been able to provide some value to your listeners.

You certainly did.

Employee retention is a big hot topic right now, like you said, with the great resignation, all the changes, and everything that corporations are competing with in retaining talent, so they certainly will benefit from the insights you've shared today.

Please let us know where we can find you online.

Yeah, I'd be happy to.

There's a couple of easy ways that you can connect with me.

If you have any questions or would like to learn more, you can certainly find me on LinkedIn.

It's Douglas Brown, and just you can search my name, and then the company, of course, is Manage2Retain.

That's M-A-N-A-G-E, the number two, not the word, but the number two, and then the word retain, R-E-T-A-I-N.

That's the name of our company.

So you can find me on LinkedIn.

I'll also maybe offer my email address if anybody has any direct questions, and that's D Brown, so D for Doug, and then Brown like the color, dbrown at manage2retain.com.

And again, our website, maybe the last thing people could go to learn more is our website, www.manage2, and then the word retain.com.

So that should help anyone.

Douglas Brown, founder of Manage2Retain, the number two, is helping us with employer retention and making sure that leaders are able to build better relationships with their team members.

Thank you so much.

I've had a great time having this chat with you today.

Well, thank you, Roberta.

I've really enjoyed it.

My absolute pleasure, Doug.

Thank you for joining the Speaking and Communicating Podcast once again.

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