THE X FACTOR BLOG

Break out quote: “Lack of loyalty is one of the major causes of failure in every walk of life” – Napoleon Hill

With the recent recession and ongoing economic volatility, many employees have found themselves out in the cold and out of a job. Staff loyalty has not been at the top of most employers’ list of concerns because after all, if someone wasn’t a good fit for the company, most organisations could afford to lose a little extra slack. However, with many businesses now recovering from last year’s financial mayhem, how to attract and keep the right kind of staff is again becoming a consideration.

Creating an environment where staff are not only loyal to your company, but also to their colleagues and projects, spells good things for your bottom line and staff turnover. To achieve this, there are a number of simple actions you can do to help foster stronger and more productive relationships between your employees and your company.

Here are a few:

Conduct a team ‘health check’
Sounds elementary right? But when was the last time you actively sought feedback from your employees as to their satisfaction in their jobs. A simple anonymous questionnaire can really work wonders for this. For example, you might ask:

• Do you fully understand where you fit in with the company’s overall direction?
• What do you like most/least about your job?
• What would you most like to learn?
• Do you feel you have adequate training to perform your role?
• Do you prefer financial or other rewards (e.g. verbal praise, a more leadership oriented role) in return for a job well done?

Improve every role
How do you make all of your roles great? Well, while individual preferences may vary, there are some standard attributes most workers will hope to have included in their roles, such as: variety in tasks, friendships with colleagues, fair decision making processes and procedures, equality between effort exerted and reward offered and a certain degree of autonomy (i.e. no micro management).

These factors can be worked into most roles, enabling you to offer employees a position that uses their unique talents and skills, while also compensating them appropriately – be it financial or otherwise. Google runs 11 free gourmet cafeterias at its Mountain View, California, headquarters and offers all its employees free gourmet meals. Those kind of extra perks really show employees you care and you’re doing your best to improve the quality of what they receive as part of their role.

Make the mundane, magic
Not all roles in your company are the most stimulating and even at the top levels, an executive who knows their role inside and out will still have times when they feel very uninspired by simply ‘going through the motions’. How to tackle the drag of monotony? Think outside the square. Cadbury recently upped the ante in their leadership program to get senior managers involved with charity projects. The program not only generated an increased connection between executives and the company, it also gave junior staff something to which they can aspire.

Move with the times
Being flexible is so important because just as a businesses’ needs change, so do the employees’. You need to be flexible to explore new options – options that may ultimately be more profitable for you. For example, being understanding of your young parents’ needs to drop children off and pick them up by approving flexi-time or the ability to start at 10am and finish at 6pm goes a long way toward improving productivity and loyalty.

Look to the future
If an employee has a career goal that means they need to leave your firm, gain experience, then come back – isn’t that a smart thing to encourage? Microsoft thought so – so they created an online alumni network to allow former colleagues to keep in contact with current employees. The result? A ‘boomerang’ effect where up-skilled employees requested to rejoin the company, bringing back all their valuable experience and more!

Say ‘Thank You!’
Specific, personal praise goes a lot further than generalized, ‘great job team’ remarks. Thank each team member separately and personally, for example, “Thank you for staying late to complete that PowerPoint presentation for the conference Janet. It really helped us out.” Showing respect and appropriate levels of gratitude are easy and inexpensive ways to keep an employee loyal and many employees value appreciation and gratitude for their work higher than any other job perks. Remember, we’re living in a time of instant gratification, so those ‘on the spot’ genuine ‘thanks’ will give employees the motivation to keep up the good work.

Don’t keep people in the dark
As I previously mentioned, staff need to feel that their work is important and has a purpose, for this, they will ultimately look to you to provide information and create excitement about what the company is doing. For example, when a team has finished a project, keep them in the loop about what will happen next to the fruits of their labour and update them on how they’ve affected outcomes in the business. It’s not hard and it doesn’t take much time, but it speaks volumes to a staff member about how important they are in the scheme of things.

Finally, realize that some turnover is inevitable. You can’t keep everyone happy as an employer, but you can do some small things that are inexpensive and effective in increasing an employee’s loyalty to you. You don’t need to transform into a Google overnight, offering free meals, child care, indoor rock climbing, etc. etc. – instead, just take small steps and build them up over time.

Having staff who are loyal and onboard with your company’s goals, mission and intention is fundamental in creating an X-Factor business. To find out more on how you can create a business that’s irresistible to customers and attracts the top staff in your industry, contact 10X Newcastle to get a copy of Nic Clark’s book The Marketing X-Factor.