It’s interesting to learn what gets the attention of senior executives in an organization. 

The more I think I know, the more I realize how much more I have to learn. 

Wow.  That was deep.  Reread that last line.  That’s why I have a blog. 

Anyway…

One of the issues I constantly deal with is how to engage senior management in discussions about employee engagement and retention.  I’ve had a CEO tell me their 65% turnover wasn’t a strategic concern.  Honestly.  The fact they had 35,000 employees and were losing and replacing 62 of them every single day of the year didn’t phase him.  He actually said “It’s been that way for nearly 4 years, for us it’s part of the cost of doing business.”

Gotta love that. 

Another senior manager from a very large retail chain told me she didn’t think their lower sales per store, lower revenue per employee, and decreased market share had anything to do with an increase in turnover experienced in the past 6 months.  She also blamed the high number of new employees leaving within 90 days to “competitive pressure” from other stores wanting to hire her employees for a little bit more money”. 

It’s hard to argue with simple logic like that.  It’s kind of like asking how a business is doing financially, and being told that revenues are up from same time previous year.  Often times that indicator is a good one, except when costs outstrip revenues.  Simple doesn’t equal right.

The cost of replacing workers, a metric that I use with my clients, is often looked at with a very wary eye.  although you can easily quantify what the cost of replacing workers are (roughly $10k per employee, almost $4,000,000 per year for a company with 1000 employees), nobody writes a check back to the company when turnover decreases.

However I did find a recent “C-Suite” executive very excited about the impact workforce engagement would have on the productivity of his workforce and what I call the “productivity quotient”.  There is a direct relationship between how satisfied and engaged an employee is and their productivity on the job.  Committed employees work harder, work smarter, and are self starters.  Unengaged workers are already halfway out the door, and their production is a fraction of what more engaged workers produce.

So, one more time.  Care about employees because it’s the right thing to do.  Provide them an ethical culture in which they can learn, grow and develop.  Ensure there is a good fit between their skills and interests and their job.  Allow them to transfer to other jobs within the organization.  Ask them their opinions on issues that will impact them.

Or care about your employee ’cause it works.  Happy employees make for loyal customers who buy more stuff.

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