Turnover shows how people feel about your business. You have to make people feel that they are part of the business and that you value their feedback.
Who would have ever thought talent retention would become a key competitive and differentiating factor for employers? Professionals have become more deliberate about looking for companies that invest in them, forcing leaders to reimagine employee experience.
My conversation with Fuzu’s Head of HR, Nelly Mutula revealed why employers must shift their focus from what the company has to offer to what employees value. She shared her struggles as a first-time manager, insights on how leadership styles impact employee retention, what makes people stay, and how employers can build organizations where people want to work. Read on!
Let’s start with the simple but yet difficult question, what does everyone want in a job?
The first thing of course is to be able to use their skills. No one wants to go to school to learn something they’ll never use in their life. Secondly, it’s opportunities for growth, people want to see that the job that they are getting into has career progression. The third reason is about having a job that nurtures one both professionally and personally. We want to find people that are exciting to work with, ambitious, and be part of a company that is passionate about different things.
People also look for jobs to get paid, we all need to have comfortable compensation. And compensation doesn’t have to be monetary, it can be in terms of other benefits. The other thing is an environment where you are able to network and build your personal brand.
These are the things that come out when people ask questions during interviews.
Why does employee turnover matter and what are the real costs of losing an employee?
As an employer, turnover shows how people feel about your business. Employees want to feel great and passionate about their place of work. When you have a high turnover, it means you are not providing people with what they are looking for in a job and you end up becoming a stepping stone for them to move to the next thing.
This is not a good thing for you because you are wasting money on recruitment, training, and building a culture that’s constantly changing because of people coming and leaving so you don’t have the stability to define what working in your organization looks like.
For an employee, it is important to look at how long people who held a similar position stayed. This shows you who the employer really is; is it a place you’ll be able to grow? Is it the right opportunity for you? If an organization has a high turnover, it could be not the best place for you to move to. An organization that has low turnover means people are happy to work there.
But there’s also a caveat to having a low turnover. You’ll get people who are staying and becoming too comfortable and are not really pushing your business.
Employee turnover matters, whether it’s high or low. There’s a cost to recruitment and the time you spend could otherwise have been used to think of a better business structure or strategy that can help you grow your revenue.
It takes an average of two months for you to get good talent. When you have a high turnover, you risk overworking your employees who might get disappointed. High turnover also affects your brand reputation because people will know it’s not a good place to work at and you’ll struggle to find the right people.
The time to onboard and train is also a cost to employee turnover. It takes at least six months for new hires to become productive.
High performers know their worth and will be drawn to better opportunities. How do you get them to stay?
(Laughs). I haven’t cracked this yet. We are at a point where we are battling for the people who are performing really well. But I’d say the key thing that you need to constantly do when you have high performers is challenge them. The reason why one would start looking for new opportunities or accept that recruiter’s call is because they feel their current job is not utilizing them as they would expect.
You need to create on-the-job opportunities that will enable them to fully utilize and develop their skills. Do not allow high performers to be very comfortable, they’ll start wondering ‘what’s the next thing for me?’
Having a culture where people can easily give feedback is also important. High performers need managers who empower them by providing the necessary support so that they don’t feel like they are pulling the weight for the whole team. Recognize their good work and reward them. Rewarding can be in terms of making sure they have regular reviews in salaries, bonuses, or outings.
If there’s an opportunity for you to promote them to a bigger role, do it.
High performers are not people who necessarily want to be managers, when you think about promotion it’s not about giving them managerial positions. But in case you are thinking about expansion, allow them to participate in such projects. It allows them to see the business from a different angle.
Is it usually about the money?
It’s never always about the money. Compensation is a key factor but it’s not the only thing. There are other things people look out for, what culture do you have, what growth opportunities are available, etc. People want to know how they’ll use their skills to grow the business and grow themselves while feeling challenged and getting rewarded.
How does leadership style impact talent retention?
A team is usually comprised of high performers, average performers, and those who struggle. As a leader, you need to treat all these people in a way that makes them feel heard and groomed.
Your leadership style needs to challenge, reward, and recognize. It’s important for organizations to clearly define what they expect from their leaders because everyone has their leadership style and they need to align to the organization’s leadership process.
How this impacts talent retention is that as a leader you’ll be able to give high performers the right opportunities, and support average and struggling performers to improve.
How would you describe your leadership style?
I am a coach but I also lead by example. One of my mantras is “If you want to get something done, do it first, and then others will learn from you.” However, as I grow from one level of management to the next, I’ve learned that it changes from me showing people how to do things to empowering them and making them see the reason why whatever they are supposed to do is important for them.
What has been your biggest realization when it comes to leadership?
Two things - overreliance on high performers will make them experience burnout. I’ve learned to balance out people; when someone is a high performer, I recognize that and also find ways of supporting low performers.
You also don’t have to hang on to people for too long, it could be that they are not a good fit for the role or the business. If you keep them around you are not only affecting your business but also their growth.
What do managers get wrong about leadership?
Forgetting the importance of delegating tasks - this has been my biggest learning over the past two years. Newly promoted managers find themselves wanting to do everything on their own, and this might make your team feel like you don’t trust them to get the job done.
Sometimes leaders also do the opposite of what they tell their teams to do. For example, when you ask your employees to go an extra mile for a client, you need to do the same for your team and the clients that you are working with.
The other thing is hiring people who are not a good fit for your business.
What managers also get wrong is failing to motivate their team members. Leadership is not only about assigning tasks, you have to motivate people for them to even want to work with you. We’ve heard the saying that 'People do not leave jobs, they leave bad managers'. This happens when you do not recognize people and motivate them enough.
When you get into the groove of managing, it’s important to make sure that people understand what is expected of them - what are the goals? What does success look like for you? When this is not defined, it becomes a struggle for people to do their best and you as a manager are going to be frustrated.
What I’ve also learnt the hard way is being too friendly. We all want to be approachable but this makes it difficult to make tough decisions when you need to.
Failure to ask for and give feedback is also something that is overlooked, and this means you never know what you are doing wrong and how you can improve.
How did I forget micromanagement? We tend to micromanage when we feel things are not working outright. It demotivates employees and is not a leadership style anyone should have.
So where should one draw the line when it comes to friendship?
There’s a saying that says ‘Leadership is very lonely’. The higher you go the lonelier it becomes, and it’s okay. The key thing it’s to not get consumed by power. The reason you are a leader and not a boss is because you are supposed to lead and grow people to be as good as you are.
About drawing the line in friendliness, people should be comfortable with you to get things done when you need them to and know when it’s time to let loose and have fun. It’s a delicate balance that you need to have as a leader.
The onboarding process plays an important role in making new hires feel they belong. How can employers make a good impression at this stage?
I usually tell people that the onboarding process does not start on the joining date, it starts during the recruitment process where you make the person understand what role they are coming in to play and who they’ll be working with. That’s why it’s important to have a recruitment process that allows candidates to interact with different team members, not just HR.
By the time you are giving someone an offer, you need to have prepared them to join the business; share with them materials that will inform them of your company’s vision, mission, and values.
New hires also need to have a clear picture of what their first 30 days will look like and what they’ll be doing. The onboarding process, therefore, plays a critical role in helping them get assimilated faster into the business. Pairing them with a peer buddy who’ll help answer any of their questions is also important.
There has been a lot of emphasis on building a great culture. What role does it play in retaining talent?
One of the things that people look out for when looking for jobs is the culture of the organization. And culture can be defined as the ways, beliefs, behaviors, and actions that make someone who is working in that organization feel they are impactful.
Culture helps in retaining talent by giving people an identity. People want to talk about the company that they work for. An element of culture is about the values that you have as a business. And when the business values align with the values of an individual, they’ll stay for long.
What talent retention strategies have worked for you?
We continuously identify top performers to challenge, reward, and inspire them. Asking for feedback on what we can do better for people to improve how they work and relate has also worked for us. You have to make people feel that they are part of the business and that you value their feedback.
Secondly, we have created an environment where people are able to learn across teams by creating an 80/20 process which allows one to spend 20% of their time exploring what other teams do.
We also give people opportunities to grow internally. I’m a product of growth within Fuzu which is great and it gives anyone who deserves it a chance. Before we advertise a job externally we look at the talent we have internally and groom them.
Our employees get the opportunities to learn by getting access to courses, career coaches, and mentors which help them to grow themselves.
The company culture at Fuzu has also helped us in retaining talent. When you build a strong team around people, they feel challenged to do their job well.
There’s the question of age, do these strategies work for Generation Z and Millenials?
Our team is mostly made up of millennials and the one thing millennials are always looking for is an environment that challenges and rewards them. Gen Zs want to grow and move fast, so it’s really about helping people see what the future looks like and giving them opportunities to explore within the organization as they perform their key roles. But of course, there are things we can do better.
What are some of the signs managers should look out for when it comes to high employee turnover?
If someone was very passionate and motivated in their role and all of sudden you start struggling to even get the bare minimum out of them, that’s a sign that they have one foot in and the other one out.
Change in how someone communicates is also an indicator and you can notice this when you ask for feedback or reach out to them for something.
An employee can also show they are disconnected when they continuously start coming in late and constantly asking for days off.
You should be concerned when someone stops asking about exploring other opportunities within the company which they were previously interested in.
