Speaker 1: You want to hear a way better name for the great resignation? I was talking to this friend who's kind of an eccentric artist and he was like, he's not really in the world where that term is being used. And so he's like, yeah, somebody mentioned this to me. And like, I just immediately renamed like the big quit, such a better name. Part of the reason that came up is on the side or full time to make a living as a social worker and his entire team quit. The team went from seven people to zero people. And so like literally not the big quit, but the all quit. In this video, I'm going to share five ways that managers and leaders can actually reduce turnover. The cool part is what I'm going to share, it didn't just like come from my brain or a book I read once. These are some pretty hard data-backed ideas coming from Gallup. And I'm not going to go super deep into like the PhD research science, because who needs that in a video, but I am going to link the original article below. If you do want to dig a little bit deeper into that. Once I share these five ways that are rooted in research and data, I'm going to share one really succinct visual model to tie it all together. And the benefit of watching this video is that especially if shared with your team or your leadership, I believe that this video actually has the power to objectively reduce turnover in your context in your organization. I'm Chad Littlefield. Let's get into it. I've got my laptop here because I've got data and I don't want to misquote data because my brain can only hold so much. The first way that managers can reduce turnover and improve retention is to catch the intent to leave before they leave, right? So in this poll that Gallup did, 43% of former employees said they spoke with a coworker about their intention to leave before leaving. So about a half people spoke to somebody else at the company about their intention to leave and 36% were actively searching for a new job for one or more months before they left their last job. So like you're in meetings with people who are actively on their way out. And so one of the ways you can do that is to catch intent before. And now there's all sorts of like tricky dynamics to that because people don't want to tell you that they're about to quit before they quit. And yet catching that intention for searching for something more is what I'm suggesting or recommending here. Number two, and this is verbatim Gallup's language in this article, empathetic managers listen to problems, they receive employee feedback, and they actually help prioritize the workload. Meaning managers actually heard what somebody said and they helped do something different. They helped create a change to shape the world in a way that worked a little bit better for that employee and for the organization. However, employees who have a manager who is quote, always willing to listen are 62% less likely to be burnout. So if people aren't quitting, they're definitely burnout. I actually talked to a client the other day, like broke my heart, almost brought tears to my eyes when I was on the call with her. It did bring tears to her eyes. She said, we are so burnt. I am fried, crispy, like I felt it come from the depths of her soul. Like she was, they were tired. And if you don't have a leader who's willing to witness that and listen to that and really hear that, right? So this is it. I am willing to know you and I see you, hear you, get you, and I'm actually with you, right? If you're just willing to know that person, they're going to be a percentage. I don't know if 62%, because this is an aggregate poll. I don't know about your specific scenario, but they're going to be a percentage less likely to be burnt out. Number three, which is kind of a three-parter is managers who find creative solutions, personalized flexibility for their employees, and who actually advocate for their people. Not in the sense that they're like pushing and suppressing others around or other teams, right? But they're advocating for their people, which if you go back to this pyramid, look at the very, very top. Are you with them, right? Do your employees feel like as a leader, you're actually with them? Like your role is to support and uplift them. Number four, managers and leaders who offer regular recognition and moments of mission. It was Gallup's language, or mission moments. For this one, this is why I'm so passionate about the idea of connection before content, because ideally it creates conversations that are connected to the purpose of why you're there. So you're weaving the thread of purpose throughout work, as opposed to just every once in a while saying, hey, look, you've done something purposeful. So the word, thank you, words, thank you, only take a couple seconds to say. However, they're meaningless. If you want to find out a little bit more about that, you can watch this video, which will be linked up somewhere. I don't really know how that works, to a video that I published that was one of the most commented on and liked videos on how to give employees positive feedback, where I distinguish between this idea of appreciation versus affirmation. And so if you want to open that up in a new tab or save it for later, the link is in the description as well, if you want to unpack that. That could be really, really useful to saying thank yous that actually matter, and don't just fall on deaf ears. Oh, fifth one. I'm so excited about this one. I think this is maybe the most powerful. And so I've got a story that is going to maybe blow your mind a little bit, and also an exercise that you can actually walk away with this video and do with your group, your team, that I believe has the power to shift your retention statistics. And numero five is managers who are able to be also coaches, who can help struggling employees or drifting employees find their way and find and create and craft a future for themselves at a company are much more likely to stay. I actually just got off the phone with a client who was telling me that her boss shared a job posting to leave the current position. She's doing an amazing job in her current role, but her boss is like, you would crush this role that pays higher responsibility. The impact's more like, I don't want to lose you, but I also need you to spread your wings. Her boss didn't know this, but she was on the fence about this company or a different company. And so quite literally in that one conversation, in that one moment, he potentially changed retention in the organization. Now Gallup shared in their poll that the number one reason people leave an organization is for a lack of career opportunities or options, lack of seeing a future there, right? Or lack of upward mobility in some way. If you think about the organization that perhaps has the least amount of upward mobility, think service industry, restaurants, let's go even deeper, pizza shop. I used to do a lot of work with Conscious Capitalism on their international conference every single year. So Conscious Capitalism founded by John Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods, who really it's the idea of business for good or business can be an immense force for good. And so one of the anecdotes that was shared about this pizza shop in Texas that had an average retention for an employee, a waiter, waitress, boss boy or gal, pizza spinner of five years. Try to find me any fast food or restaurant in general that has an average retention of five years. So nobody. That's how many restaurants, right? That's how many restaurants have a retention rate that good. Here's how I did it. When employees came in in their first week in their onboarding, they asked them, where do you want to be? We know this job is temporary for you. Where do you want to be in five years from now? What do you want to be doing? What's a passion? What's a dream? What's something, what's your daydream? If you could just snap your fingers and have the education or have the whatever to get there, what's that dream? And they spent a part of their onboarding process actually crafting a five-year development plan to get them there. They were never maybe going to get promoted from waiter or waitress. So there was no career trajectory or upward mobility within the organization, but there was human upward mobility. There was the ability to grow. And that organization, that restaurant supported their development as they went along. And so I don't know what that looks like for you and your organization, but if you can grow people to who and where they want to be, it's much more valuable to retain people for five years than it is to have them flake out at one because they're just burnt out, unappreciated, tired, all the other reasons we just talked about in this video. So quick exercise. If you're new to the channel or to me, I'm the creator of this connection toolkit, this box full of ways to create retention through relationships. And one of the things that comes in is this deck of cards called We Engage Cards. There's a card in there. So there's a bunch of quotes and photos on the card. There's a million different exercises, things you can do in any context to really engage and bring people in. One of the cards, one of the exercises that I would invite people to do is to choose a card that represents a future they would like to create. So at your next staff meeting, if you have a bunch of card images laid out on a table and you give them this prompt, choose a card that represents a future you would like to create. So imagine five years down the line, what does your life look like? What are you doing? Don't worry if it's not at the pizza shop or not at this organization, what would be your daydream five years from now? If you really hear responses to that as a manager or a leader, and every single day you're looking for ways that you can help your people get there, they're going to stay at the organization much longer. And not because they feel like they have to, or because they feel like that's their only choice because that's where their paycheck's coming from, but they're going to stay there because they want to, and they're going to give back because you've invested in them. People don't care about work unless they know that you care about them first. These five ways are good, and if you want to take it up a notch and do something like today in the next 60 minutes, you would love checking out this video on the one thing that you can do today to improve retention. You can click it right there, or if whatever device you're on isn't clicking it and that's frustrating, the link's probably in the description too. I'm Chad Littlefield. Have an awesome day.