HANGERS-ON: Authors and employee engagement and retention experts Beverly Kaye (left) and Julie Winkle Giulloni. (
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Tomorrow, supervisors throughout the country will bask in the glow of National Boss Day, receiving gratitude for being managers who don’t make workers Google search “unemployment insurance” and “COBRA benefits.”
Enjoy the day, bosses! You’ve earned it!
But the better ones, when receiving a pair of monogrammed stress balls from Sandra in accounting, would do well to spend a few minutes chewing the fat with her about where her career at the firm is headed. Five minutes, tops.
Having brief conversations with employees about their careers, their responsibilities and their ideas can mean the difference between a productive workplace showing a profit and a dismal one shedding a work force, say Beverly Kaye and Julie Winkle Giulioni, authors of the new book “Help Them Grow or Watch Them Go: Career Conversations Employees Want.”
“If you don’t take time for the conversations, it will come back and kick you in the butt later,” says Kaye, an expert on employee engagement and retention. “When employees are not feeling engaged, when they’re not feeling challenged, when the work has lost meaning, they leave.
“They’ll either leave psychologically or they leave physically,” she adds. “So if you don’t want to start replacing your people, show them you care. Asking a question and coming from curiosity as the person answers is the greatest sign of respect.”
The occasions for a chitchat with employees are almost everywhere, the authors say.
“There’s probably not anything that happens in the workplace that isn’t a good opportunity to have a quick conversation with an employee that can help them reflect, help them advance their thinking and move closer to their goals,” says co-author Giulioni, who’s also a consultant and speaker.
The authors say the best moments include:
* The start of a project: A manager should ask to discuss with a worker the four ideas she wants him to learn or the three skills she hopes he gains.
* When someone screws up: Correct the error and move on, but mistakes are good times to talk about what happened and how things can be done differently.
* Employee expressions of satisfaction: If Jeffrey in sales mentions he loves a certain task, that’s a great time for a boss to dig a little deeper into why.
* The end of a project: “If an employee says, ‘Boy, I’m glad that project is over,’ instead of saying, ‘Yeah, me too,’ say, ‘Tell me what part of that project was the most tedious for you?’” Kaye says.
The conversations themselves don’t have to be “Frost/Nixon.” A brief back-and-forth will do, according to Giulioni.
“It might be, ‘Congratulations, you wrapped up the XYZ project. How do you feel about it?’ Get a couple of lines from the employee,” she says.
It’s as easy as posing a single question and getting a few thoughts from a worker. Ask “how did that fit into where our organization is going or with trends in our industry?” or “when you put all this together, Mr. Employee, what does that mean for you?”
“It’s really as simple as that,” says Giulioni. “It’s a five-minute conversation that lets people take a breath and think about what it all means and what they can do with it.”
Unless a manager has a photographic memory, he should record these talks in an informal way.
“It’s probably wise to make some notes, just to keep it front-of-mind for you as a supervisor,” says Giulioni. “Have a file, so you’re building this dossier on each employee — not of problems with performance, but of insights you’re getting about that person for ongoing growth, development and dialogue.”
A willingness to talk with employees will result in a happier, more engaged team, the authors say. They’ll have “a sense of hope and energy for the future,” notes Giulioni.
Employers will also reap the benefits in their profit margins.
“What we know from research is that career development is a key driver of employee engagement. And where there’s engagement, there’s potential for discretionary effort — for employees to give that extra that they have,” Giulioni says.
“That translates into focused action on the part of the employee for such things like customer service, cost reduction, innovation. The list goes on and on,” she says. “All those go to the bottom line.”
Moreover, these conversations will take the surprise and angst out of yearly employee evaluations, a formal process which seems to be dreaded by workers and management in equal measure.
“I’m not saying get rid of the yearly review. I am saying that review will be much easier if you recognize the development moments as they come,” says Kaye. “Maybe some forward-thinking organizations will say, ‘If you do these conversations every day, every other day, once a week, maybe you don’t have to do those yearly sit-down conversations.’”
Employers that are helping workers climb the ladder
Giulioni and Kaye say that several major employers in the NYC area have the right approach to employee development and retention.
They include:
* American Express
* TIAA-CREF
* Bloomberg
* Pfizer
* Philips Healthcare
* Swiss Re
* Marriott
* PepsiCo
* Federal Reserve
Bank of New York
* First Data
What employees can do to start the conversation
It may be a great idea in theory for bosses to have quick, frequent and informal chats with their employees about the workplace and their careers, but what can a worker do if a manger won’t engage them at the water cooler?
The ball’s in the worker’s court, say the authors of “Help Them Grow or Watch Them Go: Career Conversations Employees Want.”
“If you’re upset that your manager hasn’t sat down and talked about your career, it’s your job to raise it with them,” says co-author Beverly Kaye. “It’s your job to say, ‘Can I have 10 minutes? I’ve been thinking I really love this project and I’d love to do more of it. Here’s some ways I’ve thought about how I can do more.’ ” The key, says co-author Julie Winkle Giulioni, is to “funnel your development desires through what’s also going to serve the employer.”
Some bosses are skilled at coming up with what Giulioni calls “immobilizing myths” designed to keep them from having to have these types of talks. They’ll insist they don’t have time, or they believe it’s not worth their time because employees will leave once they’ve gotten what they want or there’s no room for raises or promotions at the firm.
Workers must anticipate and address these “myths.”
“Come at it from the flip side as an employee,” says Giulioni. “If you’re not looking for a promotion, make that obvious to the manager. Make it, ‘Right here, in my role, I think I can grow and contribute more by learning this, by experiencing that,’ so that it’s framed in doable terms from the manager’s perspective.”