The Future of Leadership/Employee Retention in the Future of Work

Improving Hybrid/ Remote Employee Retention
Hybrid/remote employees' engagement is negatively impacted by the lack of communication and connection. The lack of engagement and support by management has been seen prior to the pandemic. In general, roughly 70% of employees feel employers are not doing enough to prevent burnout. Hybrid/ remote employees also experience burnout which in turn can produce decreased motivation and loyalty to the company because of a lack of engagement. This then leads to higher turnover which in turn causes lower retention. However, management can improve retention of its hybrid/remote employees, prior to exit interviews, by focusing on communication and connection.

There is a strong positive relationship between communication and employee performance. To improve hybrid/remote employee retention, management should do the following:

Implementing these actions will also inherently contribute to building stronger connections with hybrid/remote employees.
 * Communicate intentionally and genuinely (1 on 1). Be Present when communicating
 * Set and honor Boundaries
 * Trust your Employees
 * Minimize nonessential virtual Meetings
 * Don’t abuse chat boxes

A high-trust approach from management has been correlated with good performance during the 2020 pandemic.

Improving Employee Retention through Onboarding and Offboarding
All new employees have experience onboarding in one way or another. Some organizations classify onboarding as checking off the boxes of making sure addresses for W2s are correct and you are aware of how PTO accrues. The purpose of onboarding should be setting new hires up for success and decreasing the time it takes for them to become comfortable in their new roles. Gallup finds that only 12% of employees strongly agree that their organization does a great job onboarding new employees.

Benefits of Onboarding
There are countless benefits that come from investing in a good onboarding process including a better employee experience, higher employee engagement, and higher employee retention. Organizations with a strong onboarding process improve new hire retention by 82 percent. It also makes it easier for new employees to feel like they are part of the team. Sixty nine percent of companies that invest in employee onboarding report easier assimilation into the corporate culture. It is key to share information about your company’s mission, vision, and values early—and often—in the employee lifecycle.

Consequences of Poor Onboarding
According to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), employee turnover can be as much as 50% in the first 18 months of employment. Employees leaving the workforce can be expensive and put pressure on highly burdened resources as well as a company's financial bottom line. That high turnover is also associated with increased costs SHRM estimates that it will cost a company six to nine months of an employee's salary to identify and onboard a replacement. Others in the field believe the cost to be much higher.

How to onboard successfully
It can be tempting to have a short onboarding process, but short and non-standardized onboarding processes are likely hurting your new employees. New hires need the opportunity to develop relationships with managers, peers, and key stakeholders. The following three steps can help set new hires up for success and improve employee retention.

How to offboard successfully
No matter how effective the onboarding process, turnover will occur. This makes the offboarding experience essential to the future of your organization. It allows companies one last chance to leave a lasting, positive impression on separating employees. Traditionally companies have invested significant resources in onboard and have neglected the offboarding process. Policies related to rehiring that served you well before might need to be revised to accommodate the new ways of business. Companies have created communities of previous employees, gig workers and boomerangs to create alumni networks to help in re-hiring talent, communication of jobs and partnerships.

Exit interviews
When that happens you will have the opportunity to take part in an exit interview as a part of the offboarding process. These interviews take place when you choose to step away from an organization, school, or most commonly, an employer. Exit interviews came into being to help employers to address turnover, retention/engagement and gather information that could foster continuous improvement. In theory, this tool would save you money and your most valued assets, your current employees. Yet the effectiveness of exit interviews has been debated for decades. Many employers do not take action on the information gleaned. There are those companies that are worried about the validity of the comments, because separating employees are too emotional, use the exit interview to rant about the employer or simply disengage from the process. Another concern is that companies do not want to invest the funds to affect the change identified by the exit interviews. With the potential benefits to employee engagement and retention compared to the high costs of employee turnover and fighting to change company culture, you have to ask yourself if exit interviews are going to help your company or be one last hoop for employees to jump though.

Exit Interviews are just one tool that could help companies with employee retention. That is only if employees separate according to the company’s process. Klotz and Bolino found that style employees use to quit their jobs can provide a snapshot on the current health of the company. By following these styles, you may see patterns develop in certain departments, or follow certain managers. Research also has found that when an employee leaves it is a good time to have informal conversations with the employees who are remaining. These “stay interviews” can help to corroborate information shared in exit interviews and measure the impact they will feel due to the departure of their colleague. This practice can positively benefit employee engagement. Environment, actions and certain operations offer signals that managers can watch for in their companies that can determine the organizational health and anticipate employee separation.

What all of this boils down to is if your company has exit interviews, then you should use that data to affect positive change. If your company does nothing with the information from the exit interview, then they should remove them from the separation process. Employees, generally, already know if their company and managers use the information they gleaned to maintain or improve the situation. There are two parties participating in the exit interview, and both should come prepared. You should try to make this a calm and pleasant experience. As the interviewer, be prepared with relevant questions, be open-minded to the responses and ready to hear the truth in a potentially emotional situation. As the separating employee be honest, include both the bad and the good experience you gained at the company, keeping in mind that you should share information that can affect positive change.