This question has vexed virtually every employer in the last year. Quit rates have been at all time highs, prompting all kinds of nicknames for the widespread business challenge. Call it the Great Resignation, the Great Reshuffle, or the Great Recruitment, but many of us are still feeling its effects.

With so much attention on the workers who say “sayonara,” there’s good reason employers are asking the big question above. Why do employees quit? Is something pushing them out? Or is the grass really that much greener on the other side?

It’s not (just) about money

We all know a job offer that comes with a bulkier salary is hard to pass up. But money is not the only motivation of workers who resign. According to a recent McKinsey survey, the top reasons workers quit spanned from opportunities for growth, to money, to managers:

• 41%: Lack of career development and advancement

• 36%: Inadequate total compensation

• 34%: Uncaring and uninspiring leaders

• 31%: Lack of meaningful work

• 29%: Unsustainable work expectations

When McKinsey asked respondents why they accepted a new position, the results largely aligned with respondents’ motivations for quitting. Workers’ top three reasons for taking a new job were: Career development and advancement; adequate total compensation; and meaningful work.

These numbers tell a powerful story. Workers want to grow, do work that’s meaningful to them, and make enough money. The only question that remains: How can employers deliver?

I can’t help you get your compensation strategy in order. But I can equip you with a tool that leads employees to work that fuels their passions, all while outlining a roadmap for growth. We provide intelligent data based on employee performance and aspiration. With this information, we help organizations create environments in which employees flourish based on their giftedness. In addition, we help leaders and managers understand how to lead through change, create synergy in their teams and coach employees for future career steps.  To find out how PeopleBest can serve your team, book a demo and set up a time to chat with one of our specialists.

PeopleBest is a revolutionary, simple and powerful way to capture the exact ‘DNA of success’ inside people, teams and companies

But feedback is tricky to get right. A recent essay in the Harvard Business Review featured two business leaders’ musings on the subject: “The research is clear,” they wrote. “Telling people what we think of their performance doesn’t help them thrive and excel, and telling people how we think they should improve actually hinders learning.”

Where does this information leave managers, leaders, and employers? Workers crave growth – it’s so important to them, in fact, that many say they’d leave their jobs if threatened by stagnation. But how do employers foster growth if we can’t tell them where and how that growth should occur?

In defense of the comfort zone

The authors of the HBR essay had a couple of helpful answers to this question. They pointed to research delving into the learning process, findings showing that learning happens first and foremost in the positive. “Learning rests on our grasp of what we’re doing well, not on what we’re doing poorly, and certainly not on someone else’s sense of what we’re doing poorly,” the authors wrote. “…we learn most when someone else pays attention to what’s working within us and asks us to cultivate it intelligently.”

Growth and learning do not occur when workers are admonished with a vague command to “get out of your comfort zone” or “pick up a new skill.” Instead, workers learn the most when they’re encouraged to explore their strengths.

“It’s clear that we learn most in our comfort zones, because that’s where our neural pathways are most concentrated,” the pair wrote. “It’s where we’re most open to possibility, most creative, insightful, and productive. That’s where feedback must meet us — in our moments of flow.”

Create continual, consistent feedback

As you may have noticed in past blogs, I’m passionate about feedback.  I truly believe that these moments should be done weekly, at a minimum. Share those “quick moments” with your people when their in their zones to improve feedback and trust.  Don’t miss this opportunity to find out the ‘best’ in each of your team members!

At PeopleBest, our technology-forward approach to workplace psychology opens the door for employers to provide continual, consistent feedback hinging on employers’ strengths. With a roadmap to growth, your employees will be unstoppable. To find out how PeopleBest can serve your team, book a demo and set up a time to chat with one of our specialists.

PeopleBest is a revolutionary, simple and powerful way to capture the exact ‘DNA of success’ inside people, teams and companies.

Among these tried-and-true strategies, another emerged: The stay interview.

What is a stay interview?

The stay interview isn’t technically new, as Georgetown management professor Brooks Holtom told CNBC’s Jennifer Liu. But the tactic enjoyed renewed attention as employers intensified retention efforts.

In essence, stay interviews are like exit interviews with a twist. Instead of analyzing the motives of workers on their way out the door, stay interviews target employees who are engaged and motivated. They identify what draws committed team members to their work, what they’re looking forward to, and what the business could do to support them to go even further.

In a recent article appearing in the Harvard Business Review, one business leader recommended four questions employers and managers can use in stay interviews:

• What’s your frame of mind today?

• Who do you feel connected to at work?

• What barriers can I remove for you?

• What new thing do you want to learn that will excite you and help you grow?

In his interview with CNBC, professor Holtom suggested a few more queries: What excites you to come into work? Do you feel good about the impact of your work? Do you see a future for yourself at the company? If you were manager for a day, what would you do differently?

Make it meaningful — and easy

These questions all seek to uncover the essence of an employee’s relationship with her job and her employer. The answers, when honest and detailed, provide a wealth of information to organizations.

While stay interviews carry tremendous value, they do present a few challenges:

• First, though they potentially highlight trends within an organization, they create a window into only one employer-employee relationship.

• Second, they require companies to spend sometimes costly amounts of time interviewing, analyzing, and interpreting responses.

• Third, they generate personal answers that are much harder to analyze than standardized data.

This is not to say organizations should ditch the stay interview. But here’s my suggestion: Support the stay interview with another mode of employee listening that retrieves information from your whole workforce in a quick and standardized manner.

Learn how you can dial into what makes each of your people thrive using PeopleBest, and take your stay interviews to a new level. At PeopleBest, we’ve created an AI-powered platform that provides employees’ code to success. Ask us how we can help you discover the best in each of your people.

To find out how PeopleBest can help you fight retention, book a demo and set up a time to chat with one of our specialists.

PeopleBest is a revolutionary, simple and powerful way to capture the exact ‘DNA of success’ inside people, teams and companies.

We’re more than half-way through the year, and I’ve got a scary question for you: Where are you with your annual review? Have you thought about it since you walked through it with your boss just before the holidays? Have you made any progress on the goals you set in January?

August is not the traditional time to think about the annual review. But that makes it the best time to reconsider the practice. What is your companies policy on performance reviews?  If you don’t have one, then you have options. If you need to be compliant with your policies, then you have to deal with the best way to handle this important task. 

You see, it’s my belief that the standard performance review fails workers and employers. It’s also my belief that there’s another way. Behavior data allows managers to speak in specifics with their workers to drive progress all year long. Intrigued? Read on.

Where the annual review fails

The annual review fails for three reasons. 

1. It’s taxing.

If you’ve ever managed anyone, you know how much work goes into a performance review. Each review deserves your full attention — after all, that’s the mechanism that will drive workers’ growth (and, not to mention, pay) throughout the next year. But combing through 12 months of meeting notes to devise each reports’ strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities takes serious time and effort. 

There’s another side to consider here: The employee. Performance reviews are a classic trigger for stress and anxiety among workers. The performance review itself, embroiled in nerves and tension, steals the show, taking attention from what’s really demanding: A coming year of hard work and progress.

2. It’s subjective.

Managers are human. That means managers are subjective. One manager may see an employee’s socializing as self-indulgent procrastination, while another may see it as a collaboration-boosting strategy. The difference in opinion could color the tone of a performance review. 

Employees are also human and subjective. An employee may interpret a manager’s firm feedback as a nice-to-have goal rather than the key to their promotion. 

3. It’s vague.

Performance reviews are often littered with vague feedback and hazy goals. This leaves managers and employees in an unhelpful spot: Employees don’t know how to move forward, and managers don’t know how to assess their progress.

Behavior data does it better

The problems with performance reviews leave a lot of room for improvement. And they’ll motivate some to go back to the drawing board entirely. Here’s my preferred option: Behavior data. 

Using scientific tools to unveil the patterns in your employees’ actions, thinking, preferences, and passions, you’ll see how they work and why. You’ll gain the insights you need to propel them toward better performance. And you’ll ascertain where they want to go in the long term.

Let us, at PeopleBest, help you get to your 2022 finish line with a sample or insight of anyone on your team, on us!

PeopleBest is a revolutionary, simple and powerful way to capture the exact ‘DNA of success’ inside people, teams and companies