Great leadership: the path to great employee retention.

AuthorDee, Kevin M.
PositionHR Matters

If your company or organization has high turnover, you may as well just take a pile of money and burn it. Various studies show high turnover costs companies on average between 60 percent to 170 percent of their annual salary for every employee a company has to replace. High turnover can be fixed--and fixing it will save lots of money.

It all begins and ends with leadership and management at all levels and the actions taken to create a high-performing organization. If you are unaware of how people perceive your organization, you are flying blind. Every action of management must be in alignment with the vision and values of your company. You build trust and loyalty by walking your talk. Leadership's responsibility is to provide the tools and resources necessary to get the job done to the people doing it. If you are not doing these things and creating buy-in to your mission at all levels, is it any wonder that people are leaving?

Setting the Direction

Great leadership sets direction. In addition to providing necessary tools and resources, leaders must also create and be the gatekeepers to a healthy culture of respect. Every individual should have the opportunity to be successful in a safe environment. You can hire great talent, but they will not stay unless you maintain an environment and culture that they can thrive in. A healthy culture is one where everyone treats everyone civilly--bad actors, hoarders, non-performers and bullies are pressured to step up or promoted to the job market in order to keep a productive workplace for all.

A high-performance workplace is where each person can say: "I know what is expected of me, I can achieve my goals and I have the support of my team." Too often, workplaces are managed by opinions, gossip and vague goals, creating a "that's just how it's done around here" mentality. Creating key metrics of success that are based on data and facts essential to the success of the team goes a long way towards creating high-performance. Shared goals that are measurable and that an employee has bought into foster collaboration and shared ownership.

In order to ensure that your workplace is one of high-performance, measure team performance on an ongoing basis. Throw out the annual performance review systems that do not work. A recent survey by the Society for Human Resource Management indicated that 90 percent of performance reviews are not effective and are in fact detrimental to employees. Performance reviews should...

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