Articles
What Makes Employees Mad - Part II | What Makes Employees Mad - Part III
Workplace Wrath: Using Anger to Build | All Praise to the Supervisor | Listen First
Feedback: The Breakfast of Champions | The Emperor’s New Clothes - Providing Negative Feedback
Practicing Safe Stress | The Pied-Piper of Employee Retention Part V – Recognition
The Pied-Piper of Employee Retention Part V – Recognition
The Pied-Piper of Employee Retention Part V – Opportunity to Do My Best
The Pied-Piper of Employee Retention
The Pied-Piper of Employee Retention Part IV – Employer Expectation
The Pied-Piper of Employee Retention Employee Opinions
The Pied-Piper of Employee Retention Caring Supervisor

The Pied Piper of Employee Retention
Part II – Tools and Equipment

Are employees fundamentally lazy? Do they avoid responsibility whenever possible, preferring to be directed by others? Are they not interested in personal achievement? If you answered “yes” to these questions: congratulations, you are the successful manager of the 1960’s!

In the book entitled First Break All the Rules, the authors, Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman, write about a survey conducted by the Gallup Poll using the responses of over 100,000 employees. With the expertise of this world-famous polling organization they were able to establish a list of questions which directly related to employee retention.

The retention questions are as follows: “Do I know what is expected of me at work? Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right? At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day? In the last seven days, have I received recognition or praise for good work? Does my immediate supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about me as a per-son? Is there someone at work who encourages my development?”

This month the Gallup Poll question is: “Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right?”. The Pied Piper of employee retention can also be heard when employees do not have the proper equipment and materials for which to perform their work.

What is immediately striking is that this Gallup Poll question completely disputes the attitudes expressed by the 1960’s managers in the first paragraph. Because of the high correlation with this question and employee turn-over; employees must be interested in their performance. Why would they leave when they “did not have the proper equipment and materials for which to perform their work”, if they didn’t care about their lack of productivity!
There was a Lake Charles’ contractor who would not buy long-handled shovels for his employees, forcing them to use shovels with shorter handles. This contractor had seen his employees using their long handled shovels as chin rests and concluded they must be lazy; therefore requiring punishment! Anyone who has spent a day of shoveling with a short handled shovel has a back-ache that would have appreciated longer handles!

Having the right materials can range from the basic building materials for a construction project to having the right computer and software. The definition can even be expanded into other less obvious areas.

How about the business development manager, whom upon getting a new boss ceases to get directions about where the company’s sales effort needs to be headed? The manager’s “tool” in this case is direction and without it he is only guessing. His morale is probably sinking for he knows that he is doing his best but is lost in the dark. This lack of direction is preventing him from per-forming at his best and he knows someone will be blamed for any deficiencies. It would be safe to assume he is now looking for another position.

“Tools” could also include training. Today’s employees want to have more skills and are interested in receiving additional training. Employees know that management has expectations and not having the necessary training is a setup for failure.
In the 70’s when I needed a construction foreman I would promote someone out of the crew who was technically competent, could speak acceptable English, and who showed up for work on time. I would then show him how to fill out the time sheet, provide job specifications, and give him the keys to the truck. The next day this “supervisor” would be directing the same people he was drinking beer with the night before. And I wondered why it wasn’t successful! In that situation he did not have the proper “tools”, the supervisory skills he needed and deserved.

The American Society of Trainers and Developers (ASTD) did a study of corporate training budgets entitled “The 1998 ASTD State of the Industry Report”, January 1998. As an example, two company’s budgets were compared. One spent $275 per employee on training and the other $900. Although all the differences can not attributed to the training budget, the company with the larger human capital investment had a 40% increase in gross profit! The report also stated: ‘ … the growth in market-to-book ratios …. was more than twice as large for companies in the top half in 1996 training expenditures per employee that for companies in the bottom half.”

As our employees march away to the Pied-Piper’s sad tune, it is not much consolation knowing the proper “tools” could have prevented their exit.