On August 5th an article by SHRM President and CEO Johnny C. Taylor, Jr. caught my attention: “Ask Johnny: How Do We Stop Losing Our Best Employees?”
The situation will sound familiar to many leaders. A well-liked manager left an organization for another company. In the months that followed, several other employees left to join that same company.
Were they being poached? Maybe. But Taylor asks a much more important question: Why were they willing to leave?
One line in particular resonated with me: “Retention isn’t built when employees receive another offer. It’s built every day, long before they do.” I whole-heartedly agree.
Retention Is the result of what happens every day.
By the time a valued employee announces that they’re leaving, it may be too late to start thinking about retention. A counteroffer won’t suddenly create trust. A raise won’t fix a relationship with a manager who doesn’t or hasn’t been listening. And an exit interview certainly won’t undo months of feeling overlooked, undervalued, or stuck.
Retention is built through the hundreds of interactions employees have with their managers and their organization long before another company comes calling.
Some important ideas to consider:
- Do employees receive useful feedback?
- Are their contributions recognized?
- Does their manager know what motivates them?
- Do they have opportunities to learn and grow?
- Do they feel comfortable speaking up?
And perhaps most importantly: Do they see a future for themselves there?
Do You Know Why Your Employees Stay?
We spend a lot of time trying to understand why people leave. I think we need to spend more time understanding why they stay. That’s one reason I’m a strong believer in stay interviews. Don’t wait until someone is unhappy to find out what matters to them.
Managers should be having ongoing conversations about questions like:
- What do you enjoy most about your work?
-
What would you like to do more of?
- What makes you feel valued here?
- What could make your work experience better?
- What would you like to learn next?
- What might tempt you to leave?
And here’s another question worth asking: What does your manager do that makes you want to stay?
Imagine what an organization could learn from the answers.
People Leave Bad Managers. They Also Follow Good Ones.
By now you’ve probably heard the expression: people don’t leave companies, they leave managers.
But the situation Taylor describes illustrates the other side of that equation: People may follow good managers right out the door. When employees trust a leader who coaches them, supports them, listens to them, and helps them grow, that relationship matters.
That’s good news and bad news. It’s good news because it demonstrates how much influence a strong manager can have on engagement and retention. It’s bad news if one exceptional manager is carrying the entire burden of creating that experience.
Organizations need to develop managers throughout the company who know how to develop people, not simply manage their work.
Give People Reasons to Stay
In my keynote, Recruit to Retain in the Age of AI: The Power of Human Connection, I introduce The Human Path to Retention™: Recruiting → Culture → Leadership.
Retention doesn’t begin when someone resigns. It doesn’t even begin on day one. It begins during recruiting, and technically during “attraction.”
Candidates are already deciding whether they trust you, whether your stated values match what they experience, and whether they can imagine themselves belonging and growing in your organization.
Then culture and leadership either reinforce that decision or slowly chip away at it.
My work with organizations is ultimately about creating workplaces where people can thrive, where managers develop their people, where employees feel valued and connected, and where people genuinely want to stay.
One of my favorite measures of a thriving workplace isn’t found on a dashboard. It’s when an employee tells a friend, “You should come work here.”
Think about what has to happen for someone to say that. They’re not just willing to stay. They’re willing to put their own reputation behind your workplace. That’s a culture worth building.
Retention isn’t decided the day an employee gets another offer. It’s decided in hundreds of small moments that come before it.