… or lost boss?

A local university is using a $375,000 grant from Lilly Endowment (Eli Lilly) to support programs designed to stop the “brain drain”.  This is on top of $750,000 they received from the endowment in 2003, and another $450,000 the university committed to spending.  $1,575,000  One Million Five Hundred Seventy Five Thousand Dollars.

And no sense.

(Yea, I liked it too.)

This isn’t about helping our graduating seniors find jobs in Indiana companies.  I’m confident that if we spend money on connecting employers with high potential applicants good things will happen.  And that’s exactly what the grant has been doing.  And it’s been very very successful.  Record number of internships for the students and the highest number of job postings ever.  EXCELLENT JOB.

This isn’t about giving summer interns a place to live for three months while they learn about the area, meet alumni and network with local employers.  I’m sure that the more these “temps” learn about Indianapolis, the more they may want to settle here in the future.  It really is a good place to live, and I know the grant money from the endowment is well spent for this purpose too.  EXCELLENT JOB.

This is about the Four R’s of Workforce Engagement.  You know them.  It’s been a while, but repeat after me.  Out loud.  Really, it’s fun.

Recruit

Retrain

Reward

Retain

Recruit Retrain Reward Retain    Recruit Retrain Reward Retain

Recruit Retrain Reward Retain    Recruit Retrain Reward Retain

It may be fun to say, but the business implications are serious.  Recruiting is just the first step.  I applaud the six thousand employer contacts and the thousands of students for taking part in this very important effort.  But finding the right person for the right job at the right time isn’t the end of the process, it’s just the beginning.  Organizations need to train or retrain the employee to do meaningful work.  They need to ensure the employees who contribute most to the success of the organization receive the greatest rewards and recognition.  And they need to understand the implications if employees are staying because they want to… or because they have to.

And that is why I am so concerned with the long term value of these dollars.

Like I said before, the program works as designed.  But our statewide companies don’t have a hiring problem… they have a turnover problem.  We can get the employees through our front door, we just can’t stop them from running out the back.

What we need to spend money on is supervisor/manager training, especially those on the front-line, what my organization calls the engagement agents.  These are the twenty percent of your workforce who will make or break your h.r. initiatives.  Every day they are told “better cheaper faster” and “do more with less”.  How often are supervisors and managers taught how to deal with under-performing employees?  Do supervisors and managers know what triggers the satisfaction and loyalty of three-to-five year employees?  What about employees under twenty-four years of age?

And how do supervisors and managers work in their “valley of ambiguity” between doing what they feel is “right” and what h.r. says is “policy”.

That’s where the endowment money should be spent.

Finding people to fill jobs will get increasingly easier over the next eighteen months as the economy continues to slow and companies continue to shed jobs.  It’s all about supply and demand.

The real difference can be made by training supervisors to better understand and appreciate the importance of providing development opportunities to staff, creating a culture of ethics, allowing and even encouraging work-life balance, and ensuring a fair and just rewards and recognition policy.

Employees quit a boss, not a company.  You can spend 1.6 million bucks and not make a dent in the biggest problem with brain drain. Employees are “draining” because of bad management and company practices.  They are “draining” because another organization is offering better developmental and advancement opportunities. They are draining because their boss treats them like crap.  Yea, I said it.  Crap.

I told you I had a burr in my butt about something and this is it.

And believe me, I DON’T BLAME THE SUPERVISOR.  New supervisors are given very little training, and what they do get tends to be “technical” in nature.  How to fill out the forms, how to do quality control checks, etc.  Not a whole lot of time is spent on how to manage the group of people you were “hanging around with” last week.

Finding people jobs won’t fix the brain drain when finding jobs isn’t the problem.

Employees aren’t Unengaged because they quit, they quit because they are Unengaged.