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Set the Stage for Engagement

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Low pay is a dissatisfaction for employees but high pay by itself won’t keep the best people around. Transactional leadership might be a motivator when money and better benefits are available, but today’s climate seems to lend itself more to transformational leadership where a caring leadership can stimulate innovation, creative thinking, and productivity.

In Healing the Wounds, David A. Noer writes how the emotional impact of downsizing and the subsequent extra workload disturbs employee morale and productivity long after the fact. The study found that such feelings of stress, fatigue, and depression can last five years and more, imposing a strain on organizations’ competitiveness. Not only was there a sense of unfairness and anger over top management pay and severance, but symptoms of insecurity, anxiety, and fear that discouraged innovation and creative thinking. As Noer wrote, “There seemed to be a much stronger feeling among lay-off survivors that the organization was not in the business of looking out for its employees and that their loyalty was to themselves and to their unit, not to the overall organization.”

Clearly, after as much as five years, employees still suffered from the “survivor-blaming phenomenon,” as Noer called it. Managers and their staffs were unhappy and could be easily tempted to check out other job possibilities if they surfaced. New recruits heard stories that made them question their decision to join the company ranks.

Gallup, one of the world’s top research organizations, has always found the ratio of engaged to disengaged employees to be problematic. The recent economy would suggest the situation to have become more severe. This would suggest a review of corporate management practices to see that these 12 elements as proposed by Gallup are supported within the organization:

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About the Author

Florence Stone is editorial director for AMA and editor of MWorld, AMA’s quarterly membership journal. She is the author of Coaching, Counseling & Mentoring, The Manager’s Question and Answer Book and The Essential New Manager’s Kit.

To learn more about the American Management Association, click here.

Lock in and Engage Top Talent

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In good times and bad, organizations have learned about the impact of thinking that employees are dispensable. Such thought is particularly unwise as the economy improves after a downturn.

During the past few years, companies have lopped off employees in the hundreds of thousands for reasons of economic survival. The staff gaps that resulted are now being felt as those same companies are faced with competition both for business and the top talent they still possess.

Slowly, we are seeing a shift from a buyer’s to a seller’s labor market. There may be a high unemployment problem but HR executives are still complaining about a significant skill gap, that is, a difference in proficiency between the majority of individuals in the market for jobs and those that companies want in their labor force.

Rather than having just a replacement mentality, human resources needs a more strategic approach to the situation—one that finds answers to the coming high turnover. They need a solution that also addresses the bad reputation that the recession has wrought on many companies and that identifies cultural changes that will attract new employees.

Evidence has shown a high correlation between employee job satisfaction and engagement and employee retention and recruitment.

Here are some strategies to engage and retain top talent:

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About the Author

Florence Stone is editorial director for AMA and editor of MWorld, AMA’s quarterly membership journal. She is the author of Coaching, Counseling & Mentoring, The Manager’s Question and Answer Book and The Essential New Manager’s Kit.

To learn more about the American Management Association, click here.