To: All managers email From: HR
The organisations response to the current jobs market is to put the emphases on retention over recruitment. Keeping employees happy is now paramount. The biggest factor in job satisfaction is a good relationship with the boss.
Your relationship with your team members is crucial to the organisations smooth journey through the current choppy waters. We therefore encourage managers to make greater use of praise and be less critical. Without of course allowing standards to slip are bad practice To go unchallenged. It is important that employees feel you recognise their efforts and value their contribution.
HR would like to remind you of your responsibility not only to provide professional supervision and support but to take seriously the health and well-being of employees. This is relevant to the allocation of work and negotiating time scales for its completion.
We have noted that employees given opportunities for training and development are far more likely to stay with the organisation longer. We would encourage managers to release their employees for training even if the course is not always relevant to their current duties but would assist their future career development. From experience we have found that providing such opportunities makes it more likely that the individual will look first at internal post when seeking promotion. The range and number of post is one of the advantages of being a large organisation which we are keen to build on. Hence we continue to stress that management skills are transferable.
As an organisation we believe secondment offer an excellent opportunity for professional development and our research indicates they are very effective at incasing retention rates. Senior management have therefore stressed that line managers must put the corporate interest above team interests and release individuals for secondments even though this may pose a challenge to team work loads. The senior management team has agreed to fund backfilling of full time post where an individual is released for secondment
Finally managers are reminded of the organisations commitment to flexible working. It is very clear employees value the ability to work from home part of the week, or on occasions to fit in with domestic arrangement and to be able to adjust their hours such as a latter start or earlier finish. HR have noted that some managers are more willing than others to accommodate such requests. Whilst acknowledging that flexibility poses practical problems we are confident that with good will on both sides solutions can be found.
This approach by managers will greatly increase our retention rates.
Blair McPherson former Director author and blogger www.blairmcpherson.co.uk
