How companies keep their employees

10 Commandments To Counter The Great Resignation

More and more employees are leaving their companies. This creates a vicious circle, because the departures are increasingly difficult to compensate for and thus place a burden on the remaining workforce. Fatally, managers react in these situations in an intuitively understandable but operationally counterproductive way.

By Christian Bernhardt

Whether the replacement will succeed at all depends on the recruiting competence of the companies. Professional processes, serious employee retention that addresses the culture of the company and the managers' view of people, as well as consistent personnel development will determine success or failure.

Thank you for the fish!

When the "Great Resignation" began in the USA in 2021, it was only a matter of time before the wave of employee resignations would also reach Europe and the D-A-CH countries. As various surveys by Gallup and other institutes show, the situation also worsened in Germany in the spring of 2022. Around a quarter of employees are in the starting blocks and want to turn their backs on their company in the next 12 months. Over 40% are planning to leave in the next three years. I experienced that these are more than just statistics when an acquaintance quit her well-paid and secure job. She is capable, hardworking and conscientious; she has completed her master's degree with top marks and is in her early 30s – bursting with energy.

The current employment fit perfectly with her degree. The colleagues and manager were nice and the working atmosphere was good. After five years of professional experience, it seemed to be time for the next step in her career. Nevertheless, she quit. Was it the employer's fault? In my opinion, no. The employer did many things right, although certainly not everything, and had an otherwise low turnover rate. Particularly precarious: She quit her job without (!) knowing she had a follow-up job up her sleeve. She is not alone in this. Around one in eight employees who leave the old company, do so with no new port in sight. Whereas older employees are still more concerned with security, representatives of the younger generation are more resolute in this respect. First, create free space and then see how it will be filled.

What to do in case of staff shortage?

Imagine you have a team of 15. One position has been vacant for a long time and you just cannot find anyone suitable for it. Last week, an employee called in sick for an extended period. As is so often the case, no one is allowed to say it, but everyone knows that burnout is behind it. This can take a long time. That is not all: Yesterday, an employee told you, beaming, that she was pregnant. You have looked at her vacation and overtime accounts and it is clear that she still has about 8-10 weeks buffer until the new situation affects the team. Another employee announced in the last staff meeting that they would like to take a sabbatical and take six months off. At the time, you did not think it was a bad idea. This has nurtured hopes for a timely realization, which you rather do not want to disappoint. And at this point, an employee of my acquaintance's ilk comes along and gives three months' notice. Now the hut is on fire and there is no relief in sight for the time being. According to the IAB, the Institute for Employment Research of the German Federal Employment Agency, it currently takes around 4-5 months to fill a vacancy. Depending on the position, the industry, the location, the reputation of the company and the competence of the recruiters, the "time to fill" can take much longer.

team and try to find a solution to best distribute the to-dos. It's a delicate task: If something goes wrong in the process, there's a risk of a downward spiral, at the end of which the next employee will leave the company. A reduced workforce leads to a higher workload, which leads to more mistakes, dissatisfied customers and more pressure. As a result, internal unrest rises, followed by absenteeism and, finally, the turnover rate - and the vicious circle enters a new round.

Just how precarious the situation is in many places was shown by a survey conducted by the Hays recruitment agency in February 2022. Not the otherwise much sought-after engineers or IT specialists are at the top of the list of the most sought-after job profiles, but the good old recruiter. The demand increased by 93% compared to pre-Corona times, which is almost as much as engineers (48%) and IT specialists (+54%) combined. It is actually logical: When everyone's elbows are out in the battle for the best talent, the chances look even worse without professional recruiting.

The vicious circle of fluctuation

Back to you and your decimated team. The problem with all the layoffs and absences is that the work still has to get done somehow. And it's the manager's job to make sure that just that happens. You look at your team and try to find a solution to best distribute the to-dos. It's a delicate task: If something goes wrong in the process, there's a risk of a downward spiral, at the end of which the next employee will leave the company. A reduced workforce leads to a higher workload, which leads to more mistakes, dissatisfied customers and more pressure. As a result, internal unrest rises, followed by absenteeism and, finally, the turnover rate - and the vicious circle enters a new round.

None of it helps. You think about who could take on what and what the individual employees contribute to the success of the company. Whether you are aware of it or not – in order to gain clarity, you are guided by two parameters: willingness and ability. This results in four constellations, each with different implications for leadership.

▶ Our favorites who can and are willing.

▶ The hopeless cases. An employer once called them "rotten teeth": They don't want to and can't.

▶ The problem children: They actually can, but don't want to. The question is, why?

▶ Those employees for whom hope dies last. They may be only moderately competent, but their attitude and motivation are right.

He who laughs still has reserves! Are you serious?

With this pattern in mind, many managers fall into a trap in the event of staff shortages which, although intuitively understandable, regularly has counterproductive effects in operational terms. The crucial question: Where do you go when you need someone? Preferably to your best people. They do a good job and you know that you can rely on them. The problem with this is that it goes well once, twice, and maybe three or four times. But at some point, the good employees realize that the reward for their good work essentially consists of being loaded with one backpack after another. At the same time, the colleagues who do duty by the book, who drive projects to the wall, or who have taken their leave completely are spared. If the pressure increases and empathy as well as appreciation are lost among the leadership, you are threatened with exactly that which you don't need at all: Your best people feel like pack mules instead of favorites. If this persists and is not adequately compensated, both on the monetary and on the interpersonal level, they lose motivation. Feeling unfairly treated and exploited, they start looking for something new.

The four types of employees and the ideal/best way to lead them

Since the framework does not change, the question is what can be done instead, what should be done, what must be done! Jack Welch had a solution for the "rotten teeth". When he took over ailing General Electric, he identified those employees who were doing the company more harm than good and laid off over 100,000 employees. After that, things started to look up. Parting with employees who are neither willing nor able is not as inhumane as it first sounds. First, each of them can initially be given another chance, or you look to see if there is another position in the company for which they are a better fit. Secondly, it is not uncommon for dismissed employees to suddenly blossom in a different environment. The favorites should be left to their own devices and given room to grow: If they are not stretched to the limit, they regularly use their free mental reserves to develop constructive and innovative solutions that advance the company as a whole. After you have taken care of the favorites and the most harmful employees, it is now a matter of raising the potential of the problem children and "hopefuls". For the latter, activities are recommended in which their strengths, which always exist somewhere, are put to use. If necessary, this can also be done across departmental boundaries. To follow the approach consistently, the employee's strengths can first be surveyed at Gallup and then evaluated as to how they can best be used. Critical weaknesses must be eliminated, of course. Tandem partners are helpful here for those areas in which the hopefuls need support. In addition, it should be determined where the journey is heading overall and which future skills are relevant in the respective area. Once clarity has been gained here, employees can be strategically developed in the right direction in good time. If there is a need in the situation described, a practicable solution is also not simply to redistribute the workload, but to differentiate the tasks into more demanding and simpler roles in order to utilize the potential of the stronger employees, but not to overload them quantitatively. At the same time, this also allows the skills of weaker colleagues to be better utilized. The most delicate, but also most promising group are the problem children. The delicate thing about them is that they used to be willing, but at some point, they lost their motivation. With employees who are no longer willing, there are parallels to disappointed customers. Sales has long known that it is many times easier to win back former customers than to convince a new one. It is the same with employees. The reasons for their withdrawal usually lie in squandered trust, unproven appreciation and disappointed expectations. If the leader is serious, winning back employees is actually easy: Open conversations, really listening to employees and taking them seriously, a clean clarification of expectations, honest apologies, opening up opportunities for creativity and development, and leadership that values employee competence and commitment are all viable second steps to bringing employees back to their favorite quadrant. Why second steps? Because the first step is to change the attitude of the manager. If the manager is not prepared to update his or her employee image and leadership paradigms and adapt them to the new framework conditions, the result will be half-hearted attempts that are quickly exposed as window dressing.

Practical tip: Recognize power relations and act accordingly

The labor markets have tilted and good employees can choose from attractive alternatives. This development has only just begun and will continue to intensify. As a result, the balance of power has also changed. The war for talent is over. The talents have won. Employers who still want to recruit staff successfully tomorrow must consider this and consistently take the step toward becoming a servant leader who sees leadership as a service and not a privilege.

10 Commandments To Survive In The Competition For The Best Employees

▶ Do not lump your employees together, but manage them individually, depending on their level of maturity.

▶ Allow employees who are able and willing to do so, and give them the freedom to develop and come up with innovative ideas.

▶ Pull out the rotten teeth in the team dentition. Those who are neither able nor willing not only poison the mood, but also block the development of the team.

▶ Consistently train those employees who still lack competence. Form strength/weakness tandems and trust your employees to do something.

▶ Make a serious and sustained effort to win back those employees who no longer want to work. Appreciation is the key to success here.

▶ Be aware that the structure of your organization shapes the balance of power, communication and togetherness. On a global scale, a network structure has evolved where disruptive innovations transform entire industries overnight. Our brains function according to a network structure. Companies that implement just such structures have significantly less difficulty finding good employees and meeting the challenges of the VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity und Ambiguity) world more successfully. Traditional organizations that still stick to pyramidal top-down structures are experiencing more and more problems and losing more and more employees. Find the mistake.

▶ Do not assign jobs according to the jack-of-all-trades principle, but according to the hire for attitude & train for skills principle.

▶ Conduct retention interviews.

▶ Create a buffer in the budget to be able to hire good employees directly when they show up. If you have to wait to hire in September, you will not have filled the position next April if the high potential hires somewhere else and no one else shows up.

Picture: Gift Habeshaw/Unsplash.com