Before Employees Walk Out the Door 🚪
How are you taking care of your team amidst the Great Resignation?
When was the last time you talked to each of your team members about their career aspirations? When did you last ask them how satisfied they are in their role? Do you really know how engaged and committed they are? Would you be taken by surprise if a key employee suddenly resigned and walked out the door?
Too often the only times employers discuss these topics with their employees are when they’re hired, once a year during a performance review, or as a recent Harvard Business Review article noted, during an exit interview:
Sara, a departing employee, sat across from her company’s HR leader for an exit interview. As a marketing executive for a financial services company, she was resigning after five years to take a CMO role at a fintech startup.
When the HR director asked Sara, “Is there anything else we could have done to keep you here?” Sara paused. “Yes. I wish there had been conversations about my career goals and opportunities for growth,” she said.
Had Sara’s employer been more aware of her aspirations and needs, perhaps she wouldn’t have been sitting in an exit interview. It’s a huge missed opportunity for leaders when good talent walks out the door—especially when there is an obvious solution.
Research has shown that most people start to become dissatisfied with their job when they feel there is a lack of growth opportunities. It’s not just poor leadership that drives people away. It’s a lack of investment in their professional development.
Conscious leaders dedicate resources to developing their teams—individually and collectively. By investing in the growth of your team, you’re actually investing in the growth of your organization.
So what are some ways you can become aware of your team’s needs and invest in them? The Harvard Business Review articles includes five excellent questions to start asking your team members. These include:
How would you like to grow in this organization?
Do you feel a sense of purpose in your job?
What are we currently not doing as a company that you feel we should do?
These questions not only help you better understand the needs of your employees, but also solicit valuable feedback on how to improve the way your company operates. After all, leadership can’t know everything that’s going on internally and the impact it’s having on the entire organization. So regular feedback from everyone is critical to improving the employee experience and strengthening the overall organization.
For conscious leaders, this is win-win-win thinking that benefits all stakeholders. The happier and more engaged employees are, the more successful the company will be, which then benefits customers, investors, and the larger community in which it operates. This type of democratic, more decentralized, leadership benefits all involved.
Here’s a simple formula to help you keep this important concept front-of-mind in the bustle of day-to-day work: Better Me + Better You = Better Us
Work happy. Live happy. BE happy.
Meredith
The way we work and build teams is rapidly changing. Leaders often feel unprepared to navigate the transition. As a conscious leadership coach, consultant and communicator, Meredith helps leaders and their teams create new ways of working and relating so they can prepare for the future by consciously co-creating it.
Contact her to develop your conscious leadership and transform your organization into the workplace of the future.
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