How can we improve employee engagement and retention? I don’t know a leader who isn’t focused on that question. There are good reasons for that: Every year, employees who aren’t engaged cause $8.8 trillion in lost productivity globally. In the U.S., voluntary turnover costs companies $1 trillion annually. As a company focused on leadership development, we think about engagement and retention in terms of the effect that leaders and managers can have. We’ve identified five leadership behaviors that have a big impact:
1. Promoting wellbeing. When employees are physically and emotionally spent, they can’t fully engage in their work, and they’re more likely to leave.
2. Encouraging flexibility. Employees want to work in a way that fits the rest of their lives.
3. Enabling growth and development. Helping an employee learn shows them that they are valued.
4. Delivering clear expectations. If employees don’t know what success looks like, they have a harder time engaging with their work.
5. Showing respect — always. Demonstrating care for employees is an essential, not a “soft skill.”
Let’s explore each of those behaviors, and how they affect engagement and retention, in more depth.
1. Wellness: The Foundation for Engagement and Retention
In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, more organizations are recognizing the importance of employee wellbeing and making it a priority for leaders and managers. And with good reason: Gallup reports that wellbeing is top of mind for employees when they consider whether to look for a new job.
Employee wellbeing isn’t the sole responsibility of managers, of course. In the U.S., 80% of companies with more than 50 employees have wellness programs. But leaders and managers still have a huge impact on employees’ physical and mental health. They set the tone for so much — including how long employees work, whether they take enough breaks, and whether they feel the psychological safety to express themselves, take risks and make decisions with confidence.
Promoting wellbeing can take many forms. Teams can open their meetings by doing a wellness activity together, like a quick mindful breathing exercise. During one-on-ones, managers can encourage employees to talk openly about the employee’s stress levels and what steps to take (like reducing their workload) if their stress is getting out of hand.
2. Flexibility: Leadership Is Different in a Hybrid Environment
It’s no secret how much employees value flexibility, especially after the pandemic showed that many professionals don’t have to be in the office to work successfully. But flexibility can also be a flashpoint between leaders and employees, as we’ve seen most recently with Amazon’s return-to-office mandates.
Managers in companies that allow remote or hybrid work should get up-to-date on the best practices for leading remote teams. For example, employees who take advantage of these flexible schedules should be evaluated the same way as their in-office counterparts, and must be kept in the loop on communications. This isn’t instinctive. Even if managers went through extensive leadership training before the pandemic, they need a new set of skills for our new work environment. According to Gallup, however, 70% of managers have not been trained on how to lead a hybrid team.
Even if a team has fully returned to the office, there are still opportunities to grant flexibility. For example, allow employees who pick up their kids from school to leave early and then catch up later that evening.
3. Development: Learning Opportunities Dramatically Affect Retention
Employees want to work at companies where their leaders and managers care about their growth and development. In one survey, 94% of employees said they would stay at their company longer if it invested in helping them learn.
Companies can make this investment in their employees’ development even when training budgets are tight. Giving more regular, and more useful, feedback is a great start. Employees want to know how they are doing and expect their leaders to tell them. Even if it might be hard to hear in the moment, most people value getting practical, actionable feedback.
Delegating with growth in mind is another underutilized tool for growth and development. I’m a big fan of this strategy because it leads to learning in the flow of work, which is more likely to stick. I’ve also found that connection strengthens learning, whether it happens through mentorship, cohort learning or ERGs.
At Newberry Solutions, we’re especially excited about the potential for high-tech options, like our New Lens® platform, to make learning and development more affordable and more accessible. As I’ve written before, opening up leadership development to more employees helps companies identify more potential leaders and keeps ambitious, growth-minded employees from jumping ship.
4. Clarity: Communicate Clear Expectations
I frequently hear from the professionals I work with that they get frustrated because their bosses don’t set clear expectations for their work or define what success looks like for their roles. I also hear from employees who get frustrated because their bosses send conflicting messages: They say one thing, but their actions seem to indicate something completely different.
What I’ve observed is part of a larger issue. A survey by Gallup found that only 44% of respondents strongly agreed that they know what’s expected of them at work. Even worse? That figure is a 15% drop from 10 years ago.
So why are leaders seemingly getting less clear? I believe factors include heavier workloads, more distractions (there are more than four times as many smart-phone users as there were 10 years ago) and managers and leaders who aren’t skilled communicators, especially when working with remote employees.
To give employees the clarity they want, managers and leaders should “connect the dots” between an employee’s work and the big-picture goals of the organization, as well as between the manager’s own goals and actions. It also helps to slow and be a little more thoughtful and deliberate when communicating expectations.
5. Respect: Engage Employees by Showing Authentic Care
Respect is the theme that unites everything on this list. While so much has changed in our workplaces over the past several years, one thing remains the same as ever: People want to be treated like people. They want to work for leaders who care about them and honor their humanity. In fact, the Center for Creative Leadership has found that “treating people with respect on a daily basis is one of the most helpful things an individual leader can do.”
Unfortunately, though, employees feel less cared for at work than they did four years ago. With all of us so busy, even the best-intentioned leaders can overlook the important behaviors that demonstrate their respect to employees. However, this is a pattern that leaders can start turning around quickly. Just one meaningful conversation per week with their manager makes a difference in an employee’s performance. That conversation can be a chance to do some of the other things on this list: Check in on the employee’s wellbeing; clarify any questions they have about expectations; ask them about their goals and the development opportunities they need to achieve those goals.
Another way to show respect is balancing results and relationships. “In most situations, this only requires making small exceptions for people (when kids get sick, accidents happen, or someone needs a mental health break), but the impact on satisfaction and engagement will be significant,” leadership development consultants Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman write in Harvard Business Review.
An anecdote that Zenger and Folkman shared in their article has really stayed with me, and I want to leave it with you as an example of how leaders can demonstrate respect. In explaining why he appreciates his boss so much, an employee said, “He calls me when he doesn’t need anything.”
Isn’t that the kind of leader we all want to be?
Next Steps
If you’re ready to improve engagement and retention at your organization, there are a couple of ways that our New Lens platform can help:
1. Delivering the learning opportunities that employees crave. New Lens is a Capability Academy built on decades of leadership success and in-the-field learning from proven business leaders. It's designed to be affordable, scalable and customizable, allowing you to expand access to leadership development training, personalize learning, enable growth in the flow of work and even build relationships
2. Developing leaders that employees love working for. New Lens emphasizes the skills, such as communicating with impact and developing a high-performing team, that managers need to really move the needle on engagement and retention.
Schedule a demo today to see what New Lens can do for your organization. Visit www.newlensleadership.com or contact us at info@newlensleadership.com to learn more and get started.
