In the first two segments of this article, we explored how understanding and satisfying core human needs in the workplace is a far more effective strategy than bribing employees with goodies and gimmicks. In the second segment of this article, we explored four critical human needs that influence employee retention:

1. Pride in One’s Work and Employer
   
   
2. Work That Has Meaning
   
   
3. Understanding The Goal and One’s Role
   
   
4. To Be a Player And Not Just a Hired Hand

In this third and final segment, we will examine two more human needs that affect your organization’s ability to create a loyal and passionate workforce. These are:

1. The Chance to Experience Efficacy
   
   
2. To Be Heard

At the end of this segment, you will find a “Next Steps” section with eight things you can do to translate this information into the beginning of a successful, comprehensive retention strategy. But for now, let’s examine how your organization satisfies these two other critical human needs.

Do Employees Get to Feel the “Thrill of Victory” in Their Work?

We are also hard-wired to desire the feeling of mastery, the “thrill of victory” that comes from doing something effectively. Whether it comes in the form of solving a problem, completing a task, or conquering a challenge, mastery provides intrinsic pleasure. The behavior of babies and small children demonstrates the fundamental and self-reinforcing nature of this drive. Nobody has to reward a baby to encourage it to try relentlessly to stand up or tie its shoes. “The thrill of victory” is reward enough.

The same is true for people at work. Nothing leads to feeling good and feeling good about oneself, like being good at something worthwhile. Conversely, few things create a demoralized workforce more effectively than preventing them from doing their jobs well. Improving morale and retention requires examining your organization for the typical ways organizations hamstring efficacy, such as inadequate training, out-dated technology, and job expectations shrouded in mystery. Besides affecting retention, these obstacles strongly impact productivity. A 1995 study by Yankelovich Partners for the firm of William M. Mercer revealed that the average worker surveyed reported they could be 26 percent more productive if it weren’t for the following obstacles, listed in order of importance: lack of direction, support, training, and proper equipment.

Questions to ask your Managers and Employee Advisory Council:

1. Do we prepare our employees to do their jobs well, through adequate orientation and training?
   
   
2. Do we have any jobs where failure and inadequacy are the primary experiences employees have?
   
   
3. Do we provide the technology and logistical support for employees to do their jobs well?
   
   
4. Do our managers know how to set clear expectations, give clear feedback, and perform productive performance reviews?

Do Employees Feel Heard?

Few things enrage employees more than when senior management doesn’t bother to ask for their feedback or ask how they are doing. Although getting employee feedback is Management 101, many senior managers plow ahead with new initiatives or maintain unproductive practices without bothering to ask how they are “playing among the troops.” I’ve often been struck by the power of the need to be heard when conducting focus groups with organizations having serious morale and turnover problems. On several occasions one or more employees will sigh at the end of the focus group and say “Whew, I feel so much better just being able to say what’s on my mind. Now I can get back to work.” When I hear this, I can’t help but think of the morale and productivity increases the organization would enjoy if they implemented formal and informal processes that engaged their employees in an ongoing conversation about how they are doing.

Questions to ask your Managers and Employee Advisory Council:

1. Do our employees believe we listen to them?
   
   
2. Do our employees believe we care about what they have to say?
   
   
3. Do we actively solicit feedback from employees, both formally and informally?
   
   
4. Do our managers ask their subordinates for input on how to improve as a manager?
   
   
5. Do we respond to employee feedback promptly, letting them know what is being done – or not – with their feedback?
   
   
6. Do we make it safe for employees to express dissatisfaction and disagreement, or do we label them “not a team player”?

Getting the Biggest Bang For Your Retention Buck

If you’re serious about holding onto your best people, you cannot ignore the results from Gallup’s research involving over 2 million employees. Curt Coffman and Marcus Buckingham, the primary researchers in the project make clear the critical role managers play in an organization’s ability to retain talented people: “If you have a turnover problem look first to your managers,” they assert. “People leave managers, not companies.”

How a boss treats an employee is the strongest determinant of their work experience. Just as in customer service the truism goes: “To the customer, the employee serving them is the company”; to the employee, their manager is The Employer. Having supervisors who haven’t been properly trained or aren’t held accountable for how they treat their people is a recipe for low morale and high turnover.

Quint Studor, CEO of Baptist Hospital in Pensacola, Florida, who has led the hospital from being a below average hospital into a national exemplar of patient and employee satisfaction, notes that a vital part of their turnaround was investing in an area most organizations give short shrift: management development. At Baptist, managers at all levels are taken off-site for two days, every 90 days. After just two years, overall employee satisfaction had risen 30% while nursing turnover – something no hospital can afford in today’s labor market – had decreased by 40%.

Thus, perhaps the most important action your organization can take, is to provide your managers with the training and support to do their jobs well, and to hold them accountable. Not only will your employees be happier, but so will your managers, because they’ll be more effective.

Taking the Next Step

Retaining employees – especially your best ones – requires more than Goodies and Gimmicks. It requires understanding what human needs drive satisfaction and high performance, and then using this knowledge to create an intrinsically motivating work experience. If you do this, you will become an organization that truly is Retention-Worthy.

Here are some next steps to put these ideas into action:

1. Create an Employee Advisory Council and use the preceding questions as a catalyst for exploring how to create a more intrinsically satisfying work experience.
   
   
2. Use the preceding questions to engage your management team in the same conversation.
   
   
3. Actively involve your workers in generating and executing solutions.
   
   
4. Stay connected with the voice of your workers through surveys, focus groups, town hall meetings, Q&A coffees, informal check-ins by managers, and your Employee Advisory Group.
   
   
5. Impress upon your management team that retention is a everyone’s job, not HR’s.
   
   
6. Invest in management development. Help your managers increase their Emotional Intelligence Quotient (EQ) by learning about human nature and how it affects employee performance. Help them develop the skills to bring out the best in their supervisees.
   
   
7. Support your managers’ development by instituting a coaching and mentoring program for them.
   
   
8. Hold managers accountable by using appropriate goals and metrics in their performance evaluations.