Addressing Employee Retention Trouble

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I know I said in the last post that I wanted to share some information about teaching innovation, but ALSO I have been unable to let go of something that has been in my brain for a full year at this point, and it relates not only to the innovation conversation but also to our current moment in time.

It’s May now, and very often that can mean a time to take stock: In higher ed, for example, we are winding down if we’re on traditional semester schedules, and staff and students alike may soon take a breath and start considering how they want life to look in the fall.

Both students and staff may be thinking, Is this where I want to be three months from now, or is it time to make a change?

For many people, the summer is a great time to consider new opportunities, and in light of the employee retention challenges across the nation and especially at colleges and universities, I thought I might share some research and some free advice about one specific employee retention tool.

I’m thinking about this idea in the context of innovation because you might recall that in our last post, the research under discussion indicated that hiring proactive employees was one piece of developing your innovative culture.

But there are some things we need to understand about proactive employees, so I thought I’d illuminate some research from a year ago from Nielsen, First, and Crawford (2022) in Organizational Science.

Here’s the thing about proactive employees: They will take only so much nonsense.

Basically, the more proactive your employees are, the less likely they are to sit still for ongoing obstacles, things that they perceive as barriers to their ability to complete their objectives.

The thing that makes a difference in the retention picture is perceived organizational support.

In fact, employees in this study who perceived a lack of support from the organization indicated a high possibility of departure. This effect does not hold for people who are not considered proactive as measured in the study¹.

(Context for this study: A 3-wave survey of 256 architects.)

If we believe that hiring proactive employees is important to innovation (it is!) and to the overall health of our organizations (it is!) AND if we recognize how costly it is to replace such employees (it is!), then WE need to be proactive in the organization about retaining such employees.

So I’m gonna give you an idea here about how you can go about improving perceived organizational support, and you can steal it and adapt it to your needs as you see fit.

Here’s what I’d be doing if I were concerned about retaining my high flyers in the org. In this context, we’re talking about proactive employees as a proxy for high flyers, but you can use whatever metrics you want for determining your target group.

If you’re not sure, do this:

• Think about your teams or departments or whatever sphere you’re in. Think about each person coming to you to say that they’re submitting their resignation.

• What feels like a kick in the gut and sends your brain spiraling into panic? What trips your amygdala and floods your brain with thoughts like, “Oh no. This person knows so much and does so much. How on earth can we ever replace that?”

• Whose announcement will require you to collect yourself and intentionally shift your focus back to THEM and their well-being, shelving your panic about the impact on you, the department, and the org?

And this exercise is not about position, right? The people about whom you have these feelings could be anywhere in the org. I’m thinking all of the hard-working administrative assistants out there who literally hold the place together with their institutional knowledge, interpersonal acumen, and attention to detail.

Those are the people. And here’s how I’d be handling them.

(Honestly, what I’m about to share is a good idea for all members of the org, but understanding constraints as they are, I’d focus on a subset of employees.)

Enter the Stay Interview.

The Stay Interview (SI) is not a new concept, but I don’t think it’s something I’ve ever seen deployed in higher education, specifically.

(I mean, we’d have a much better handle on retention matters in higher ed if we routinely conducted SIs with students, but I digress.)

I’ve seen exit interviews, but personally, I find that approach ridiculous. It’s far too late to gather valuable data at the point of exit, especially since —in the case of proactive employees — the effects of the frustrations that lead to departure are cumulative in nature.

Much like a failing personal relationship, it’s not the first frustration or the fifth or the fiftieth that results in the end.

The cumulative effects of those frustrations require intervention much earlier in an employee’s organizational lifespan.

In a Stay Interview, we’re asking people one-on-one about their experiences in the org, specifically about their challenges and frustrations when we’re talking with proactive employees or other high flyers.

Because at the end of it, if you’re paying your employees competitively and they can go somewhere else and experience less frustration for the same money (or even a bit less!), that’s a net gain.

The Stay Interview does a few things for us. First, it allows employees to answer questions about matters that are often invisible. For example, we might ask about the thing that routinely frustrates or challenges them and how they think that issue could be solved.

Because high flyers are often proactive and willing to solve problems on their own AND ALSO often sensitive to the org discourse, one that may create the sense that raising problems without presenting a solution is negative organizational behavior², many daily frustrations may remain invisible.

But these are the very frustrations that will lead to turnover among high flyers. Talking about them explicitly helps us work to address them, and even if we can’t solve them, remember that your high flying employees need perceived organizational support. That means that they feel heard and feel seen, which is almost as good as having the issue resolved.

(I mean, it’s not as good as just fixing the problem. But it matters a whole lot, really, especially when some problems just can’t be solved. In the case of the architects, for example, the org can’t solve zoning problems, which was a primary frustration among participants. But leaders can listen, understand, empathize, and create a safe space for venting because that actually helps. That’s perceived organizational support.)

It also allows us to highlight invisible strengths, talents, and ideas, and this point is one of many reasons it’s better to have an outside agent conduct these interviews.

I can get people to talk about their strengths in ways insiders cannot. I won’t take time to unpack that here but it’s very risky for org members to talk honestly about themselves and their experiences in the org with an insider because as much as we’d like it to be true, org insiders aren’t ever neutral.

And talking about strengths is just not comfortable for a whole lot of people who have been socialized to diminish themselves and their achievements.

I’m not trying to sell you something here, I promise; I just want us to consider all of the dynamics required for gathering quality data.

Hearing about those individual strengths and ideas is important because it’s another opportunity to enhance perceived organizational support. If I know what your strengths, talents, and ideas are, I can work to ensure they’re nurtured and supported, even if they’re things that don’t show themselves during the flow of our daily work.

And in these conversations, it’s entirely possible that a game-changing idea will emerge, something that someone simply hasn’t felt they could share. Very often, that idea begins with, “Well, I never mentioned it because the team might think it’s dumb, but…..” or “I’ve raised this issue before and yet…..”

Finally, stay interviews need to address leadership because an influencing variable on employee retention is proximate leadership. As an interviewer, I want to know how employees are experiencing leadership, the things that are working and the things that aren’t.

Specifically in the context of this conversation about proactive employees, I want to know what makes the employee feel supported in the org. I want to know how much they believe their proximate leader understands, validates, and works to mitigate their frustrations on a routine basis³.

Many orgs already use an annual evaluation process, the effects of which are mixed, at best. If we wanted to take a better approach to employee retention, we could add these SI conversations to the mix.

The challenge, of course, is that org agents (supervisor or HR) aren’t always positioned for gathering the most unvarnished perspectives from org members.

However, it’s always worth asking the questions:

• What are your most frustrating barriers or challenges? From your seat, how do you think they can be solved?

• What great things haven’t you told me about yourself or about your work in this org? Talents, skills, ideas? Lots of times proactive employees identify problems and fix them before people even know. Let’s take a minute to bring those matters to the fore.

• What makes you feel supported here? Is there anything I can do as a leader or supervisor to better support your work?

I’d share those questions in advance so that people have time to think through their answers. Here’s a link to other questions that could be useful.

It’s a small investment, really, for potentially big returns.

1. Side note: If you know your org members will experience a very high level of frustration due to external barriers that cannot be effectively mitigated, do not look for proactive employees because the cost of turnover will be too high. In this type of org setting, you want people who are NOT proactive. I know that sounds counterintuitive, but putting problem-solvers in front of problems that cannot be solved is just an exercise in meaningless frustration.

2. This ethos in orgs is so frustrating to me. Ace! You’re the supervisor! It’s literally YOUR JOB to solve problems! I think about organizations that emphasize the importance of “not complaining” in the context of Dr. Sara Ahmed’s work on complaints, from her book, Complaint! She opens with this idea: “To be heard as complaining is not to be heard. To hear someone as complaining is an effective way of dismissing someone. You do not have to listen to the content of what she is saying if she is just complaining or always complaining.”

3. I will again advocate for an outside agent here. We’re not going to get the kind of honesty we need if org agents are conducting interviews. Speaking as a person who is happy to be honest and transparent in many circumstances, if you ask me questions about the org and its leadership, my answer will be that everything is perfect! These leaders are extraordinary! This is the Best Thing Ever! My research is based in power, and this girl isn’t a fool.