How do we attract the right people for the right jobs at the right time? But what about the flipside? What are we doing to make sure our existing key people and
best performers don’t leave?
As organisations continuously and relentlessly change, the best people know they can always find another job if their present employer doesn’t give them what they
are looking for. Money is important and is often the explanation people give for leaving. But is that really the reason?
One of the most common motives I hear from key people leaving their jobs is, “I’m fed up with the company professing one thing but doing another”.
So what could this mean?
Values misalignment
Over the last decade or so, most organisations have looked at the kind of behaviours they need in their workplaces to get the work done to meet the needs of the
various stakeholders. Employers have explored a range of ways to change behaviours that are not consistent with their strategic intent.
One approach has been to examine the organisation’s ‘values’. There is renewed interest in ‘values alignment’, to bring about change in organisations. As Charles
Handy said: “The vision and values stuff really matters. If there is no common goal, people put their own goals first”.
In Collins and Porras’s important book Built to Last, they showed how organisations that persist with and remain true to their core values are not only ‘visionary’ but
produce consistently and significantly better shareholder returns.
Two examples
Take for example, the company that emphasised ‘communication’, as a core value. It had state of the art telecommunications, a communications department with
regular in-house magazine, teleconferencing facilities, email bulletins and six monthly road shows for all staff.
But a closer look showed that communication was always from the top down — and there were no mechanisms in place to facilitate upward communication. Nor
was there any regular cross-divisional communication.
One very highly regarded senior manager left this company. He said: “the importance of ‘communication’, was painted on the coffee mug, highlighted in the tender
documents, demonstrated by size of the IT and communications department and in bold in the Annual Report. But I never found out anything about my Division until
after the decisions had been made — even if I had to do the downsizing!
No one asked me for my input. If they don’t want two way communication, that’s fine but please don’t spend time and money telling us how important it is, if you
don’t practice what you preach.”
Other core values
Take the company that has ‘respect’ as a core value. Another key employee walked away saying she thought ‘respect’ was a three-way activity for the customer,
for the employer and for the employee.
This female manager with two young children, felt that she was disadvantaged because of the timing of significant meetings and discussions. She made a number of
fruitless attempts to try and change the time of important meetings to between 8 am and 6 pm.
She had been with the company for three years, was annually exceeding her budget and was generally regarded as a strong performer. The company described itself
as ‘family friendly’ and had even entered the Work and Family Awards.
But this manager felt she was not a prime candidate for promotion as she was not able to attend the late night meetings that seemed to count. For her ‘respect’ was
talked about but not acted out in the corporate culture.
Does your company practice what it preaches? In both cases, these employees left because the company did not ‘walk its talk’. An important point is that
companies often do not know that their culture, systems, structures, processes or policies are not in sync with the stated core values. The practices and behaviours
are so embedded as to be invisible.
The two examples above showed that incongruent values increased recruitment and turnover costs, and meant the loss of intellectual capital, corporate memory and
goodwill. Neither of these employees is out there as advocates or PR spokespeople for their former employers, if talking to potential new employees.
Walking the talk
What can you do to make sure that your company is walking its talk?
One way is to get some small groups together and ask them about aspects of their day to day work that are inconsistent with the stated core values. My guess is that
there will be some common themes.
You could also undertake a review of the recruitment and induction processes, the kind of training that’s done and how people are rewarded and promoted. Look
at your performance management approach, the usual times and structures for important meetings and decision-making processes, the formal and informal
communication channels, your security systems (especially if ‘trust’ is a stated value). Don’t look at just the written systems and policies but find out how it actually
happens in practice and how this lines up with the firm’s values.
You might also want to contact the people who have left the company over the last six months especially those who you did not want to leave. Now that they are
settled in their new role, they may well feel free to talk about the real reasons for their leaving and also be able to contribute their experiences of any value/reality
mismatch.
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