Ep 36 - The Art of Minimizing & Accepting Employee Turnaround

Power Up Your Team Podcast

Welcome to this episode of Power Up Your Team podcast. Your free resource with tips and tricks to build a more resilient team.

During these times it’s so hard to find employees and, not only that, I hear from my clients that it’s also hard to keep them around. That applies particularly to people in their twenties or thirties.

I think young adults did not necessarily get prepared for realities of work during college. And they simply don’t know what to expect. How could they? Also, there are so many choices these days that they simply don’t know what they want from their careers or life altogether.

So they experiment. They join one company, think it’s boring and they leave. They try out the next. And yes, learning through experimentation is what scientists do to create the next innovation. Organizational development experts say that making mistakes is a key component in learning. And Albert Einstein said that failure is success in progress.

And yet, when young people enter the workforce, we expect them to get it right the first time.

Here’s truth #1: People will join your business and leave - that’s a fact!

Here’s truth #2: You can decrease the likelihood of employees leaving. But no matter how hard you try, you can’t prevent it.

As CEO or Founders, you can do two things:

A) increase the likelihood of them sticking around

B) Be prepared for when they leave

How do you increase the likelihood that a new employee will stay

Take your time interviewing them. Check out episode 10 of Power Up Your Team podcast titled “Don’t compromise on this when you hire your next leader”.

• Include multiple participants in the interview process. Let your existing team members weigh in. If they have a say in who is hired, they are more likely to support the newbie in feeling a sense of belonging.
• In conversation with them, get a sense if they can get behind your company’s vision and purpose.
• Once they have joined your team, allow them to change things for the better. No smart curious mind comes work to just follow instructions

And with all of that there is still no guarantee they will stay.

And be honest, do you want everyone you hire to stay for the rest of their life? You benefit from healthy change in team members because they will bring new thinking to your business.

So, how can you be prepared in case they leave?

• Don’t give them the keys to the castle.
• Don’t assign work to them that is mission critical and they are the only ones in control.
• Cross train your employees.
• Make sure several people can do critical work or have critical know-how.
• Create a back-up system. For example, have a primary and secondary for each client account.
• Structure the work for collaboration
• Create processes where your team needs to co-create to deliver product or services.

In summary, employees are leaving your business.
That is a reality.
You can control it to some extent but not fully.
The faster you can move from a team with individual knowledge to a team with shared knowledge – aka as organizational knowledge - the easier it is to navigate through choppy waters as you grow your business to the next level of success.