Investing in Employee Retention
Maintaining a Stable Workforce
This article concludes our series on companies and employees (following “Investing in Employee Selection” and “Investing in Employee Training”) by focusing on retaining employees.
Employee turnover can represent a significant loss of the company’s investment in training. This issue becomes even more critical during periods of economic growth.
Micro and small enterprises, with limited resources for employee training, are particularly vulnerable. These businesses often find themselves training employees who then leave for competitors.
Creating a Positive Work Environment
A key step in retaining employees and protecting the investment in their training is creating a pleasant and supportive work environment.
Open communication is crucial. Managers should actively listen to employee suggestions and criticisms, making every effort to implement necessary changes.
The goal is to foster a conducive environment that promotes employee retention. Retaliation for feedback, especially criticism, should be strictly avoided.
Implementing a Benefits Policy
Beyond a positive work environment, competitive economic benefits are essential for employee retention. While salary increases incur higher social security costs for the company, a benefits policy offers a cost-effective alternative.
This can be achieved by offering benefits that are legally excluded from employee wages:
- Profit or Performance-Based Bonuses (Law No. 10.101/2000): Requires agreement with the employee union and quarterly or annual payments.
- Accountable Allowances: Allowances for external activities, with proper documentation, are not included in wages.
- Daily Travel Allowance: Does not integrate into the daily salary if the monthly amount doesn’t exceed 50% of the salary.
- Uniforms and Safety Equipment: Providing these does not contribute to employee wages.
- Scholarships and Educational Support: Financial assistance for education is not considered part of wages.
- Company-Provided Transportation: The cost is excluded from wages.
- Medical, Hospital, and Dental Coverage: Payments for these are not part of wages.
- Life and Injury Insurance: Premiums paid by the company are not included in wages.
- Private Pension Plans: Contributions to these plans are not part of wages.
When developing a benefits policy, start by assessing benefits that align with the company’s financial realities. Discuss the proposed benefits with employees to ensure they meet their needs.
Implementing these benefits will create a more attractive work environment, encouraging employee retention.
Interpersonal Skills for Managers
The Importance of Interpersonal Skills
More managers are dismissed for lacking interpersonal skills than for technical incompetence. Since managers achieve results through others, leadership, communication, and other interpersonal skills are crucial for effectiveness.
Interpersonal Communication
Effective communication is essential for managers. Communication involves transmitting a message that both sender and receiver understand. It encompasses various forms, including memos, emails, newsletters, presentations, and nonverbal cues.
Interpersonal communication focuses on interactions between individuals, while organizational communication addresses communication within groups.
The Communication Process
The communication process involves seven elements: (1) source, (2) encoding, (3) message, (4) channel, (5) decoding, (6) receiver, and (7) feedback. The source encodes a thought into a message, which is transmitted through a channel. The receiver decodes the message and provides feedback.
Conflict Management Skills
This section covers the administration of conflict. What is it? Why is it important? Improving the skills to manage conflict?
What is Conflict Management? The conflict may have positive consequences, for example, keep the work group viable, self-critical and creative. The conflict management requires the maintenance of an optimal level of conflict in a group. Little conflict creates stagnation. Much conflict creates disruptions.
Why the Conflict Management Important? A study of mid-level executives revealed that the upper and middle managers spend 20% of their time dealing with conflict.
It should stimulate the Conflict?
The data suggest that there are some situations in which conflict is favorable. Table 16.2 contains a set of questions that managers can do to identify situations that require stimulation of a conflict. We present below some suggestions that managers may want to use.
Changing the Culture of the Organization. The initial step to be taken by managers is to reward those who challenge the status quo, suggest new ideas, have differing opinions and creative thoughts.
Political Skills
This section helps the manager to develop political skills.
Politics versus Political Agenda. Politics is about who gets what, when and how. Politicking and do the actions that are possible to influence or attempt to influence the distribution of advantages and disadvantages within your organization. Those who have good political skills are able to effectively take advantage of their power bases.
Why There’s Politics in Organizations? Once they are individuals with different values, goals and interests, organizations have a potential for conflict. Resources are limited and therefore not all interests can be guaranteed. In addition, employees perceive that a person gains mean losses for others. Thus, these factors create a competitive atmosphere. Another factor is that many of the “facts” used to allocate the limited resources are open to discussion. Finally, considering that most decisions are taken in a climate of ambiguity, people in organizations will use their influence to “dye” the facts in order to gain support for his priorities.
Skills Developing Effective Policies
The following suggestions may improve the effectiveness of the policy manager.
Structure Arguments in Organizational Goals. Making effective policy requires that obscure personal concerns. Never mind that a goal may be personal, managers must structure their arguments in terms of benefits that organization.
Develop the right image. You have to know what the organization expects in terms of mode of dressing, colleagues whose friendship and cultivate or avoid preferred leadership style. The image management – that is, shaping the image that we project during an interaction – is an important part of political success. People who are efficient in managing their image tend to mold to your advantage the way others see and evaluate (see Table 16.6).
Get Control over the Resources of the Organization. The control of scarce resources makes you more valuable to the organization and results in safety and promotion.
Make yourself indispensable opinion. Managers can do this through his experience, contacts, secret techniques and natural talents.
Be visible. Without being a braggart, the manager can use the following techniques to attract favorable attention to themselves, give progress reports to the chief, be seen on social occasions, actively participate in professional associations, taking prestigious projects and develop powerful allies.
Get a Coach. Firstly, the mentors are valuable sources of communication. Second, your support sends a message to the organization. Managers can increase your chances of getting a mentor making contacts with bigwigs.
Develop Powerful Allies. Managers must cultivate contacts at all levels of the organization. These contacts can provide important information and support from the “pot”.
Avoid the Elements “Tagged”. Every organization has members whose marginal status is questionable. Given the fact that impressions of effectiveness are often subjective, the skills of a manager can be questioned if it is closely associated with these people marked.
Support your head. Managers should support their heads. If your boss is competent, he will ascend in the organization and you have the chance to be lifted along with it. If he is not competent, you should quietly use of influence to be transferred.