Hi, my name is Mark Mitford. I spent 25 years working as a high level HR executive in corporate America for several fortune five hundreds. If you're a small business owner, CEO, or any other professional, given the task of solving your company's HR issues, then you're in the right place. Today's episode is gonna talk about the employees are actually in control now, not the employers and that's right . I said it , let me say it again. The employees are in control.
As we all know, this is actually being recorded in the summer of 2022. A lot of things have changed in the workforce. We're coming out of COVID and the pandemic and employees, in some cases with some organizations have just returned back to work in the last few months. And now that they're being , um, somewhat told, or in some cases, perhaps even kind of dictated that they've returned back to work.
Some employees now are looking for remote opportunities and there's thousands upon thousands of jobs that are fully remote now, whereas that wasn't the situation just a few years ago. So I think that's where the tables have turned on employers. And what we wanted to focus on today is really giving you four steps and four initiatives to think about, to try to do what you can to actually retain and engage your employees. So with that, let me start out with number one.
When you think about it, too , that managers in a lot of cases, there were thousands of employees who are actually hired during COVID , who, if they are coming back into the workplace, now it's actually like their new employees. So think about it. You may have somebody on board with you for two years, but that person, if they started in the summer of 2020, they started here in COVID .
So you still have to treat them like they are a new employee and get to know them in a, in person face to face fashion. One of the key things I love to do with companies that I work with at HR catalyst is doing something very simple called a touch base meeting. This just involves three things, and it's, it's, it's not a , um, performance review, but when we talk about onboarding , this is something I definitely advise.
All of our clients' work on is this is a three step process that will help to just create a dialogue. That's really just focused on the employee and versus really going into goal goals and objectives that you're focusing on. So let me go through those three steps for you. The first one is as simple as how are you doing?
And it sounds so basic, but again, a lot of times engagement and employee retention is focused on the idea of making sure the employee is important in a lot of cases, the number one reason and been this way for years, the number one reason an employee leaves a company is because they feel very disconnected from their manager and that hasn't changed in the last probably 15 or 20 years.
They don't feel like they trust or respect, or they really feel like they have little to no connection with their manager. So asking them how they're doing and not just doing this just as a pat answer, because you're, it's scripted, but really just making sure you have the time to ask them how they're doing. How is their family doing? What's going on in their life is critical. The next one is around, how is your job going? So this one is just, how's the job going.
They might have been, they might be on a really big project and they might still be getting used to being back in the workplace again. So , um, and the office again. So just asking them, how is your job going? Sometimes it's amazing. If you just ask that question, the person may openly start telling you about some of the frustrations they're having and that's critical.
And that's good because if you know about the frustrations, you can actually do something about them versus that person possibly you think everything's going really well. And that person comes in and turns in their two week notice and resigning. And they're just another statistic in the great resignation.
The other one too, the last one here in that three step approach on the touch base meeting is probably the most important, what can I do to help you do your job better for you to be more successful? It's actually using a critical thing called servant leadership. It's really asking them what can I do to help you so that you can be better? And you think about it. It sounds again so simple, but it's so powerful. If you ask employees genuinely, what can I do to help you?
It's amazing that that person feels like they, they have a much greater bond with you and a much tighter bond with you from a leadership perspective and managerial perspective, and probably the level of trust and respect goes up immensely. If you do that. So that's number one, number two, remind your employees about why the company exists. This goes back to your mission. Purpose statement, core values, really focusing on the culture of the company.
As we mentioned previously, a lot of employees now work hybrid. Maybe they worked a couple days in the office, a couple days out of the office, weekly, some are still fully remote, and maybe they're gonna stay that way, but making sure they clearly understand why did they join this per the company? They obviously started with the company and they were excited whenever they started.
If it was last year or 10 years ago, making sure you focus on bringing up what the company does, why it's important and really critically. Why , what are the core values at what makes our organization have a great culture? And this is one of the reasons that you wanna stay with the organization. I still remember when I worked for a company called Ericsson , in 32 years ago, I started there. I still remember their core values. Why is that? Because they were constantly being brought up.
They were constantly being discussed by our leadership team, our local leadership team. They're also brought up by the CEO who was based in Stockholm, Sweden. That's kind of why those things, it's really one of those drum beats, making sure that you talk about what makes the company a , have a great culture and the core values is critical. So that's number two, number three, making sure you are focusing on your top talent.
Your top talent is only your top 10, 15, maybe 20% of your organization, but making sure you are doing everything in your power to retain those individuals because they are being courted by a lot of other organizations. Now, good people can always find jobs. Doesn't matter how the economic conditions are and what's going on in the economy. So focusing on taking care of your top people is critically important that not only means monetarily, but it also means career development.
And one of the other big things that people leave top talent leaves an organization. The number one reason they leave is not about money it's around. They feel unchallenged. They feel like they don't have a challenging job. Their job is boring and mundane. And so then guess what? They dust off their resume and they start talking to recruiters or looking for jobs on indeed or LinkedIn. So making sure you're doing everything to keep them focused and challenged is really, really critical.
So that's number three, taking care of your top talent. They're the ones who will actually drive your company forward in every company I've been with. Those are the key people that you have to do, whatever it takes to make sure you can hang on to them and retain them as long as possible. Now let's move on to number four. The number four is actually a very interesting term. I just heard about a few months ago. It's actually called work life alignment.
And when you think about it, okay, mark, that's just work life balance. Well, it's actually very different work. Life alignment is very, very different work life alignment for somebody who is the owner of the company for a , um, CFO or COO work life alignment for them is, could be 50 to 60 hours a week. And that's just normal. They come in early, they leave late and that's just what they've done. Chances are they're also baby boomers.
So they're also later in their career and that's just the way they grew up in an organization. The key thing now is work. Life alignment really focuses on a critical thing because we actually have five generations working in the workplace. Currently, this is the first time in history that we actually have five generations with the new workforce, the youngest workforce, which is our gen Zs. And every one of them probably has a very different work life alignment definition.
And so the key thing is to get to know them. And part of that you can do is that one we talked about earlier, having that touch base meeting with them regularly, you may have a person who's 58 years old. Kids are out of the house. Um, and they don't mind working until seven o'clock every night. That's just something that they do and they enjoy it because that's what they've done their entire career.
Whereas you might have somebody who's 28 or 30 years old who has three young kids under five at home. Their idea of work life alignment is very, very different because they may want to do everything they can to be leaving the office by five o'clock. It doesn't mean that they're not a good employee. It simply means that their idea of work life alignment and being aligned with work and their personal life and what they do outside of work is very different.
And now a lot of , a lot of younger employees are really looking for companies who have a focus on alignment and work life alignment, and also making sure they have time do to do things they truly enjoy. Whether it's volunteer, work, taking care of their kids, doing things at their church, coaching their kids, little league , whatever it is, but that could be really what focuses on having them truly satisfied within their organization and ultimately could drive their retention.
So those are the four things I wanted to go over with you today. Hopefully you found that helpful. If you need to jot down some notes re-listen to the podcast one more time. And hopefully you found a , a number of golden nuggets in here within this presentation over the last few minutes. So with that, that about covers it for today. Thanks for listening for more things on all things pertaining to HR, visit us at hrcatalystconsulting .com .
Don't forget to like us and subscribe to our podcast until next time. This is Mark Mitford take care byebye .