Elevate Your Managers and Master Employee Engagement and Retention

Challenge: Your Company Culture is a Mess!

You've offered salary increments, workplace benefits, comprehensive insurance covers, and an employee package to die for, yet you're still dealing with high turnovers or difficulties retaining your employees. Why is that?

"A big reason people leave companies is leadership."

Your innovative employee retention strategies might work on paper, but if your company culture is still lacking, your talent retention challenges in 2024 will remain. Think about it: employee needs are changing.

While many employees prioritized financial benefits in the past, most currently want their emotional needs met, such as respect and workplace motivation. If this need is unmet, they leave for another company that offers an employee-friendly and supportive culture, even if they get a pay cut.

And who can meet this need in the organization? Not your well-thought-out innovative employee retention strategies. No. Your employees' interaction with other employees and mostly your managers determines whether they feel respected, valued, and understood.

Managers especially have a significant influence over your employee engagement and retention rates. Great managers know how to make your employees feel like they are part of the team and an important contribution to the overall success of your organization.

They also understand the importance of inclusion and diversity in the workplace and its importance on employee retention, so they will champion it and support it wholeheartedly.

Read about the connection between retention and diversity here.

Great managers understand the role of motivation in employee retention, so they keep your employees engaged and motivated, even amid uncertain economic times.

• Fact: great managers lead to a 72% reduction in employee turnover.
• Fact: great managers increase employee motivation at least 3.2 times.
• Fact: great managers increase employee job satisfaction by 13.9 times.

You consider your managers great because they are well-trained and experienced. So, where are you missing the mark? Well, great managers are emotionally intelligent. This separates managers who ensure tasks and organizational checklists are met from managers who understand the role of motivation in employee retention.

By emotional intelligence, we mean managers who understand and manage their emotions and recognize and influence the emotions of others. The ability to influence the emotions of others is a skill many find hard to adapt.

That is why, even though all managers understand the importance of employee retention in the workplace, many don't have the emotional intelligence to enhance employee engagement and retention because it requires soft skills related to emotional awareness, empathy, interpersonal communication, and stress management.

As your first challenge, emotional intelligence boards well on self-awareness and the complexity of emotions. Developing self-awareness is challenging because it requires honest self-reflection and the willingness to acknowledge and work on one's weaknesses.

Additionally, emotions are complex since they are influenced by various factors, including past experiences, cultural norms, and personal values. Understanding and managing this complexity in oneself and others can be challenging.

Beyond this, it is equally important to know how to interpret and respond to the emotions of others accurately. This requires practice and can be particularly challenging in diverse or conflict-prone environments like a workplace.

What You Should Do!

Upskill your managers. It sounds simple, but it is not because the key to beating this talent retention challenge in 2024 is improving your manager's emotional intelligence. That means giving your managers great attention while incorporating training and coaching sessions to enhance their emotional intelligence.

Part of this employee turnover solution is to enhance your manager's soft skills to help them build relationships with your employees that foster employee engagement and retention through increased reliability, well-being, and satisfaction. That means:



• Teaching your managers to be empathetic
• Teaching managers how to empower employees.
• Teaching managers how to inspire engagement and workplace connection.
• Teaching managers how to develop their employees' skills.
• Teaching managers how to listen to employees.

Conclusion

One cornerstone of talent retention lies in the hands of our managers. And so, the talent retention challenges in 2024 require a leadership team equipped with emotional intelligence, empathy, and the ability to connect with employees genuinely.

By fostering a culture of understanding, support, and genuine engagement, businesses can unlock unprecedented employee satisfaction and loyalty levels. The future of talent retention hinges on our ability to elevate leaders who can inspire, motivate, and retain the very best of our workforce.