HR Blog | Employee Retention & Turnover Management

Manager Tips: How to Deal with Bullies on your Team

“The company needs to review and root out workforce bullies in this organization. There is a core group of four employees led by John Doe* and with influence from Sue Smith* that cause widespread problems that are affecting the company’s bottom line through confusion, lost productivity, low morale and employee turnover.” – Comment obtained in ExitRight® exit interview. *Names have been changed to protect identity. The Workplace Bullying Institute defines workplace bullying as repeated mistreatment by one or more employees in the form of either verbal abuse, threats, intimidation, humiliation, work interference, or a combination of any of these behaviors. Unless the employees affected or their peers step forward, it is entirely possible you may not even know it’s happening, quickly driving out your team members. It is possible you have a bully present in your office, but what should you as a manager do when that person is part of your team? The key to successfully navigating the liability associated with bullying is prevention. It is important to have credible data that allows employers to eradicate the bully. Often, employees will not speak up even in an anonymous survey. They are more likely to communicate the problem if they can safely share with a third party. There are products on the market that will flag certain words associated with bullying to help employers get ahead of the problem. For example, employee engagement surveys and exit interviews such as ExitRight® offered by HSD Metrics has word algorithms built into the technology platform. If employees use one of more than 160 keywords, employers will be able to quickly identify possible issues. The small investment in collected data is far outweighed by the potential cost of resolving a dispute. Either way, if the tip about a workplace bully comes from a current or former employee, it is essential to act and effectively resolve the issue. Once bullying has been confirmed, hold the person accountable. Too often, managers fall back on the “we’re all adults here” sentiment, leaving the bully and victim to work it out themselves. However, this will typically result in the problem escalating, harming any productivity even more. Be sure your team understands what constitutes acceptable behavior in the office, whether these are developed together in a group setting, or provided by your company. Bring each of your team members in for individual meetings presented as just a quick check-in on work-related matters to get their versions of the story. The person or persons being directly bullied should be separated from the offender, especially after any discussions, to help prevent retaliation. Once you have all of the facts, have the bully apologize and present them with appropriate consequences. Support those affected in any way possible to help make them feel more comfortable in the workplace. Be sure to monitor the bully’s behavior moving forward and let them know that if a line is crossed again, their termination is highly likely. Look in the mirror: Are you the bully? If you find that you’re always feeling as though your employees aren’t doing enough, or others seem to be avoiding you, it’s entirely possible that you are the bully. This may be a bit more difficult to grasp and change, as it relies on you hearing the truth from your team without going on the defensive, which can be hard to take. Talk to your employees and ask honestly what changes they would like to see in how you treat them or run the department – and be sure to implement their instructions. It may take some time for them to warm back up to you, but with continued effort and proven changes, you can reestablish a great employee-manager relationship. Another possibility is to implement a 360 feedback solution, which will help employees and managers understand the potential disconnects between intended and interpreted actions. Regardless of the source, it is important your employees understand that workplace bullying will not be tolerated. As a manager, you will need to investigate the claims and address any issues quickly, either to retain current employees or prevent more from leaving. If you are having any issues with employee retention, contact us today. Our provided metrics will help you measure your employees’ perceptions so you know exactly where you are excelling, and where improvements need to be made.

Excessive Overtime and Lack of Appreciation Increases Turnover

“500 to 700 hours of expected OT a year is unreasonable. I spent 2/3 of my life at work. Senior managers never spend that much time at the facility, and when the manager’s nickname is ‘MIA’ because he is never around, it is indicative of a problem.” – Comment from an ExitRight® Interview* As a manager, you balance your daily work tasks, projects, clients, and more, all while trying to lead your team. It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking that if the team has been doing well on paper, there is no need for you to interfere, but that could lead to your employees walking out the door. With a large workload, perhaps the only way the employee has been able to get everything checked off the to-do list is by staying until 8 pm nightly. Even if the particular individual doesn’t mind the overtime, the perception that the extra work is underappreciated will fizzle out any extra motivation. When business and profits are great, or when there’s a big push to reach the monthly goal, it is easy to lose sight of how the accumulation of extra hours each week impacts the employee’s energy and commitment to the organization. Using our ExitRight® employee exit interviews, we were able to discover the top 13 causes of controllable turnover; taking the 8^th spot was “an unreasonable workload.” The combination of supervision failing to notice or appreciate the overtime and the difficulties the overtime created for the individual’s work-life balance ultimately resulted in the person seeking other employment. Talking with your employees and understanding their workload will help you retain the talent. If they are consistently working overtime, figure out how you can help. Does the work need to be divided between several employees? Should you look into hiring a new team member? Are there any deadlines that are able to be moved? They will not only appreciate the acknowledgment for the hard work they’ve been putting in but also knowing that you truly desire to help them achieve a better work-life balance. These meetings will also create an opportunity for the individuals to express any workplace concerns they may have, facilitating a dialogue of ideas, and showing that they are valued members of the team. While keeping a balanced workload is important, your managerial role as the team leader is vital. According to over one million completed ExitRight® interviews, supervision is the number one cause of turnover across all industries. Effective supervision also requires balance, as too much may result in employees feeling micromanaged, but too little leaves your team without guidance or support. Regular meetings with each individual discussing his or her goals, both short- and long-term, how the day-to-day workload has been, and the ways in which the work has impacted the team helps provide a clear view of progress. Professional feedback is required for any growth to occur, so plan one-on-ones with your employees regularly. Don’t forget that recognition and feedback can be provided between the scheduled meetings, as well. Managers have a responsibility to examine overtime practices and workload issues and remain present and accessible as the leader, walking around the team each day or keeping the office door open. It is no doubt that business goals are important, but they will be impossible to achieve with underappreciated, burnt-out employees. Of course, even the best management is not immune to employees moving on to other companies, but performing exit interviews with HSD’s ExitRight® helps you understand the underlying causes so they may be examined to increase retention, work efficiencies, and commitment of employees. Contact us today for more information and help lower your employee turnover rate. *We provide comments we have received through exit interviews conducted in the workplace. All company names and interviewee names are kept confidential.

Are Instincts Reliable When Hiring?

Waiting to adopt a more evidence-based hiring process could be stunting your organization.

Through our conversations with HR professionals working in multiple industries about the troubles and triumphs they face each day, we’ve noticed a recurring issue that consistently threatens effective hiring. Quality of work and level of experience isn’t always the clinching factor for a candidate’s selection. Instead, hiring decisions are sometimes grounded in something much more surface-level: the first impression a candidate gives. A recent article by Arlene S. Hirsch, MA, LCPC, whose work focuses on career and psychological counseling, dives into whether or not trusting that gut feeling is an effective method of selecting future employees. The Power of Five Minutes In five minutes, you can gather basic information about the stylistic and surface-level qualities of the candidate, but little about who the candidate is as a person. Hirsch states that in her experience, it takes as few as five minutes for a hiring professional to decide if the candidate is going to be hired. While this shows the power of first impressions, it also shows how quickly an interviewer’s objectivity can be nullified. Employers making instinctual decisions are simply at a disadvantage. Consciously or not, their initial impressions can become incredibly difficult to overcome. While no employer will ever have every piece of information before pulling the trigger, an evidence-based method brings employers far closer to making grounded, informed hiring decisions instead of relying on confirmation biases from the first five minutes. Character Counts, but Competency Counts Most Although the way a candidate presents themselves to their interviewee may be only a mere fraction of the equation, for some employers it exceeds even experience in importance. While “gut feelings” about a candidate’s character can help in tie-breaking situations, they shouldn’t take precedence over evidence-based indicators such as assessments or even interview rubrics. Establishing a model for multi-stakeholder, multi-step hiring decision-making doesn’t take a tenured HR director. It just takes a willingness to check biases at the door, create a process simple enough for all to understand and follow, and iterate from hire to hire. Hirsch suggests these considerations to building your own evidence-based process:

Document the concrete skills that matter most for your hire
Clearly set expectations for interviewers of how they should ask questions (and listen to answers) to best evaluate candidates
Find and/or create complementary assessments that objectively stratify candidates against those skills
Continue to make updates as you learn what works about your process – and what doesn’t

Not only do these changes build confidence in hiring decisions internally, they also can improve the candidate experience because of the increased accountability among interviewers and HR personnel. Looking for Help Getting Started? At HSD Metrics, we specialize in helping our clients make strategic and educated decisions based on data collection we handle – from expert survey design qualitative feedback and data visualization. Our assessments can help fill in gaps in your talent acquisition and retention insights immediately. Get in touch with our consultants today for more information and a free demo of our software!

How to Achieve Higher Completion Rates for Online Surveys

These three considerations make a big impact on completion rates.

Employers today are more and more attracted to data to make informed decisions. Still, data can be misleading, especially when it is incomplete. If, for example, an employer only captures data from disgruntled employees, they may have a false sense of the culture. Employers must aim to achieve the highest completion rates possible when sending online exit surveys or they risk making management decisions based on incomplete data. In our experience, keeping these three factors in mind when developing and dispersing an exit survey will yield more complete data and better retention insights. Timeliness Strike while the iron is hot. Over time, former employees will forget the cumulative reasons that caused them to leave their (now-previous) position or company. Or they may simply move on to a new company and forget about their old employer. To reach the root of the issue, it is important to notify the exiting employee within the first two weeks of an employee’s exit. When possible, providing employees with the option of completing the exit interview before or after the exit data, leads to higher completions. The longer employers wait to notify exiting employees of the exit interview, the higher chance that the employee will have decreased interest in completing this important step in the exit process. Accessibility To increase your chances of getting a response, do your best to obtain accurate personal contact information with multiple notification approaches. If possible, collect both a personal email address and phone numbers. This not only increases your chances of reaching the person, but also allows exiting employees to use their preferred method. Texting may be a violation of privacy laws that require permission first by the employee, which is difficult to obtain since the employee is no longer working with the former employer. All notifications to complete the interview should include assurances of privacy compliance. Exit interview participants especially like the option of permitting or not permitting their name to be released with the interview. Secure, confidential information is of high importance to respondents. Multiple channels for response are also important. The workforce remains multi-generational, so surveys that can be completed via several methods—e.g. phone, computer or mobile device, and even paper—show higher completion rates. If you can meet the employee where they are and remove possible barriers to entry, you will see better results. Exit interview recipients should be contacted frequently over a span of six to eight weeks using email reminders, numerous phone attempts, voice messaging, and allowing the phone interviewer to be contacted directly. Focused Questions The person filling out your survey is voluntarily giving you their time and information, so be direct and stick to exit-focused questions. Ask questions related to employer influenced turnover causes with prompts for explaining the reason behind the selection. Letting the employee “tell their story” about why they left and what could have occurred to prevent it should be the interview’s focus. Too many exit interviews mirror an engagement survey which doesn’t pinpoint why the person left. Irrelevant questions and too many questions bother respondents, who then stop the survey before it is completed. With open-ended but direct, well-researched interview questions, results may be viewed alongside our ExitRight norms. Best Practices From ExitRight’s experience contacting 1,100,000 exit names, completion rates of 55-65% are the norm when both web and phone interview options, with personal email availability, high phone accuracy, and continuous contact attempts occur over a span of several months. Online exit surveys help eliminate the discomfort that can occur in a face-to-face interview with a former employer. To achieve the highest completion rates possible, it is essential that employers use effective methods that make the best use of both parties’ time. Let us show you how you can make new strides in retention through the ExitRight process. Would you like to learn more? Contact us today to connect with our survey and exit interview experts!

Boost Your Team’s Productivity and Engagement with Work Redesign

Once you’ve learned why your employees leave, how do you start fixing the problem?

One of the common turnover causes we see from exiting employees is the balance of workload. Work redesign is a workplace flexibility initiative that can help reduce employee turnover. Our ExitRight® exit interview software has the capability to take note of both unbalanced workloads and the fact that new techniques in the workplace don’t always relieve the strain. Check out this real-life example of feedback from a client where an unbalanced workload made the work more difficult: “The workload was average to high capacity. The load gradually got larger and larger, not necessarily doing the same thing either. I believe that new techniques brought into the department should make things easier and clearer; not more difficult.” Once you’ve identified via a former employee that your workload management and work design need to be updated, you have a task and direction. But how do you get started? Here are a few very high-level steps that take place during the work redesign process: Assess Begin by reviewing the current workflow and outline the current state. You’ll want to be as upfront as possible with any even remotely involved staff about the changes you’ll be making and the due diligence being taken to ensure everyone is treated fairly and stands to benefit significantly. Discussing the end goal of the work redesign program will help employees feel involved and work toward the end goal of the program, which is truly their satisfaction and productivity. To better understand pain points from every perspective, begin conducting employee interviews to identify major priorities – evaluating how long tasks/projects take, determining barriers to efficiency and learning what doesn’t get done as timely as employees would like. This is the point where our consultants typically spend some additional time to relay feedback with senior stakeholders in the organization, validating the investment moving forward. Redefine Employee interviews require plenty of heavy lifting but the immediate next steps are where the body of work most comes to life. Create your new and improved workflow, identifying all the tasks the workflow comprises. Popular visual diagramming tools can help to iterate and collaborate on a workflow solution that meets every requirement. Review the new workflow with stakeholders to ensure that methods and procedures are carefully defined – some key gaps may begin to bubble up to the surface within the decision-making team. This is also an ideal time to solidify measures of success and measurable outcomes since it will become very clear how this process will begin to play out in terms of milestones and participants. With tasks ironed out, the team can begin to outline the required qualifications, experience, skills and competencies for individual positions. Complete an assessment o the current talent pool based upon levels of role complexity, skills and knowledge within the organization, along with an impact analysis related to diversity. Based on the gaps identified from that assessment, a gameplan for solutions to buy, build and borrow talent will emerge. Always keep in mind that findings from talent gap analyses are typically very sensitive for internal personnel. As you begin to share performance metrics with the wider organizational audience, also introduce reward and recognition programs to sustain and encourage the changes. Implement Continually communicate the value of the new workflow with those impacted by the change – depending on the organization, the first few months can be tumultuous as teams adjust. Always provide opportunities for ongoing feedback from employees, keeping communication lines open and support abundant. Monitor Monitor the progress of the work redesign strategies at defined intervals and modify the workflow as necessary, establishing a regular cadence to apply and communicate changes. Review Review and evaluate performance metrics frequently throughout the first year of the change. Work redesign can tremendously benefit your team’s productivity and engagement – but it’s no light undertaking. HSD Metrics can support your initiative with data-driven, expertly designed surveys that can demonstrate the progress you’re making and where there’s still ground to cover. Contact us today for more information on how we can help your achieve your retention goals or to schedule a free demo!

ExitRight® Norms and Retention

Data-driven Ways to Improve Retention

Our article about the most important turnover causes for employees in 2017 illustrated trends across all industries and drew out some interesting exceptions. ExitRight® now offers industry-specific norms to help our customers benchmark their organization’s turnover trends against peers in their industry. These norms, backed by interview data from 160 organizations ranging from 200 terms a year to 20,000 exits a year, and a database history of nearly 1.5 million exit names, offer unique insight that would be unavailable looking at an individual exit interview. ExitRight norms exits for these industries: Retail, Manufacturing, Energy/Utilities, Building/Real Estate, Healthcare, Schools, Financial Services, Professional Services, Non-Profit, Distribution. Non-Specific Industry norms are also available. Learn What Matters to Your Employees; the Benefit Myth There are many myths as to why employees leave. The insights offered by ExitRight norms are interesting and useful when considering how your turnover causes are similar or different compared with other respondents in the same industry. Employee benefits are a case study for this; our norms find that across all industries, benefits—often highlighted as a key motivator to bolster employee engagement, retain talent, and hire the best employees—are actually the least important reason employees leave their employer. Now, that isn’t to discount the value of offering competitive and high-quality benefits to employees. What this does tell us is that of our twelve core reasons for employer influenced, controllable turnover, benefits are rarely the tipping point. If benefits are absent and well below the competition, the norms will pinpoint such differences but rarely are benefits even a top 5 reason from 12 controllable turnover reasons for leaving. As one client remarked, “This data just saved us nearly $12 million dollars in a healthcare benefit enhancement we budgeted in our business plan for next year.” In a tight labor market, perks/rewards are important but ExitRight® data shows there are items of far greater non-financial importance such as solutions when it comes to the supervisor, recognition, targeted extra mile effort rewards, competitive pay, and meaningful work. Insights, Segmented by Industry Our norms weigh industry trends against each other. While supervision is the single most important reason across all industries, norms do vary by somewhat by industries. For example, 24/7 operations such as healthcare, or retail stores with full days and long evenings, show the work schedules/hours of work as a top 3 reason for leaving. Our data shows that work schedules and shift considerations are nearly twice as important to a healthcare worker than a financial services worker. The Qualitative and Quantitative Difference ExitRight norms, coupled with insights from your exiting employees’ thoughts, needs and opinions, create a platform to improve your retention. Would you like to know how we can apply ExitRight norms to your organization and industry? Contact us to schedule a live demo or call us at 877-439-9315 to talk with an expert.

The HSD Metrics Blog

Manager Tips: How to Deal with Bullies on your Team

Read More

Excessive Overtime and Lack of Appreciation Increases Turnover

Read More

Are Instincts Reliable When Hiring?

Waiting to adopt a more evidence-based hiring process could be stunting your organization.

Read More

How to Achieve Higher Completion Rates for Online Surveys

These three considerations make a big impact on completion rates.

Read More

Boost Your Team’s Productivity and Engagement with Work Redesign

Once you’ve learned why your employees leave, how do you start fixing the problem?

Read More

ExitRight® Norms and Retention

Data-driven Ways to Improve Retention

Read More

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