As we’ve been discussing regularly throughout the “Virus Era,” there remain plenty of challenges keeping a bricks and mortar private practice fully staffed and rolling. In BB Post 18, we asked and explored the question Where Did All the Workers Go? Here in Post 20, let’s talk about the logical next questions: WILL They Coming Back? If so, WHEN? And How do we GET AND KEEP Them?
As we get set to address these questions, let’s look at a few current-day conditions, lest we forget what helped get us to what’s being called The Great Resignation. Glad to share some thoughts to that end, including some helpful statistical tidbits from a variety of sources (including my friend and former work colleague at our state human resources department).
• 63.3 percent of employers say it’s harder to retain employees than to hire them. I can’t help thinking we could flip this if we work at it and can tell you for a fact some of our colleagues are working hard at doing so. One colleague is even now doing a full team survey asking employees to rank employment benefits one through fifteen (won’t it be nice to KNOW, rather than just assume), and we’re planning on actually leveraging what we learn to retain employees!
• The average cost to train a new hire is $4,129. And the average cost to on-board a new hire is $986. So if we do that math, it costs the business five grand (or more) every time we lose an employee. Multiply that by the number of employees we’ve replaced (or at least lost) the last couple years, and certainly the case is made…if not for sanity’s sake, for profitability’s… to get better at retaining employees DESPITE the challenges of our day! Employee retention is like everything else at which we aspire to do better – we have to understand what needs doing, then do it!
• 73 percent of employees are considering leaving their jobs. Ugh, right?! In order for our business to be the exception to that, we have to CHOOSE to be that exception.
• They leave for more money, right? WRONG! … At least wrong some of the time, anyway. During The Great Resignation, 58 percent took a pay cut for a happier work experience (here we see the bias of the Millennials, right?), 74 percent of younger employees say they would accept a pay cut for a chance to work their ideal job, and 23 percent of job seekers say they do not require a pay increase to change jobs. The subjects of these findings are not new, of course, but the extent of them is.
• 69 percent of employees say they would work harder if they felt appreciated, and 37 percent of employees consider recognition in the workplace most important in their employment. By the way, 43 percent of employees prefer receiving recognition in private one-on-one interaction with their supervisor over receiving it publicly. Furthermore, 84 percent of “highly engaged” workers (which is the kind we want!) say they received recognition the last time they went above and beyond in the workplace. We see clear leadership opportunity here, right colleagues?
I encourage in considering these statistics that we remember leaders positively influence people (like when we recognize and appreciate employees and they perceive that to be the case), managers create and deliver systems to leverage those influences (like systemizing employee recognition so it happens on-goingly and isn’t missed). Leadership and management are both very important, but the times call for recognizing the difference AND the chronology here. Leadership FIRST please!...
• We mentioned engaged employees are what we want. Yet only 20 percent of employees say they are engaged in their work (although giving credit where credit is due, I predict your score would be a good bit higher). We’ve talked much about the importance of engaging your team in the matter of employees staying in their positions, and studies show engagement directly reduces absenteeism (by as much as 41percent – how sweet would it be to have 41 percent fewer missed workdays by staff about now?!) Again, we live in a time in which we need to be leaders before we’re managers. Leaders engage their teams, right? They take initiatives that cause that. MORE leadership please!...
• It’s not just about staying in the job. Engaged employees also outperform unengaged peers by 21 percent. And they provide a much better customer experience, which absolutely impacts bottom line. So taking initiatives to engage employees is not just good for retaining your team, it’s good for increasing patient perceptions of value, productivity and profitability as well.
• Helping power The Great Resignation, we currently have THREE job applicants for every ONE job posting. WOW, right? ... Not that long ago, it was by far the opposite. I recall more than one time when I had literally hundreds (plural) of applicants for a starting consulting position. And it doesn’t seem all that long ago!
• Millennials are now the largest group in the US workforce (currently making up 35 percent). So in some ways, as go Millennials, so goes the workplace. We know Millennials are more inclined to value work-life balance and workplace quality of life (that’s what we told them they should value, right?), but my observation is we’ve not necessarily responded to this knowledge in our deliberate attention to and initiatives toward workplace culture.
Could this be our key to The Great Return? Could it be as simple as work/team culture? I believe it is, Colleagues, and we can absolutely achieve that culture if we make the decision to do so and take initiatives (many of which we’ve discussed in these blog posts) accordingly. We’re seeing colleagues doing exactly that every day (including in a conversation just today).
Well, it’s always interesting to look at statistics like these, but what matters far more than what we know is what WE DO with what we know. They say information is power, but I’ve learned this is simply not true. In fact, I’ll be so bold as to say information is largely and most often a total waste of time and money, because nothing is done with it. Nothing is done because of it. And it strikes me now is the time for us to take what we know – improving work culture, perceived employee appreciation and team engagement are keys to halting The Great Resignation and leverage that by putting initiatives in place to earn our practice’s share of The Great Return.
And that seems to be coming. Perhaps not as “great” or as soon as we’d like, but coming. As we discussed a couple posts back, we know a huge percentage of the workforce didn’t just disappear, right? And the so-called experts (a designation worthy of our consideration but given their batting average the past couple years, to be taken with an appropriate grain of salt) seem more and more of an opinion that workers are going to come back. I don’t profess to be a laboronomist, but tend to agree. As the labor market pendulum reaches the apex of its swing forth (as usual, going overboard in the swing), we can expect the swing back. But when? When can we expect the labor force to return?
Soon, I think. Perhaps months, not years. It stands to reason with stimulus money running out, and record inflation kicking everyone’s butt, most people will need to be actively earning money to carry on. And many of us will be needing that dual household income to pay the bills. So as we anticipate The Great Return, however great it might actually be, let’s make darn sure we get our share of any returning workforce. Or better yet, even bias our workplace to get MORE THAN OUR SHARE. Wouldn’t that be a welcome change …
And of course, we create such bias, such advantage to win, with culture. And so we’re all on the same page, let’s think of culture simply as an employee’s answer to the simple question – what’s it like here?
When you think about it, we’ve been experiencing a culture double whammy these last couple years. On one hand, the Virus Era has been hard on teams. Darn hard. The massive drop in team interaction, face-to-face communication, team development gathering, team-building events, etc., has taken a huge toll on work teams. We’re hardwired to be in community and haven’t been; and signs of the toll abound in the workplace and in broader society.
At the same time, we’re seeing and experiencing the very high regard … the demand, actually… Millennials have for specifically desirable workplace culture. This is nothing new by topic, right? Poor or even so-called “toxic” culture has long been a source of employee dissatisfaction (we’ve heard about this repeatedly in confidential staff interviews for decades), but in the current “normal,” workers are simply not having it. Period. If I don’t like the culture, I’m out. …It’s as simple as that. Even if you throw more money at me -- wrong culture, I’m bailin’. This is Millennial thinking, and the impact of this thinking is exacerbated by the culture crisis brought on by work conditions of the Virus Era. Wondering why we’re paying staff more than ever and they still don’t stay? This is very likely the reason, Colleagues. Culture. And quick as a wink, it’s out there on social media.
So if we want our share (and more) of any Great Return of the workforce, we’ll need to earn it. We’ll have to pay more than in the past, and that’s here to stay (ever seen wage levels go backwards…like, EVER in history?), but with Millennials dominating today’s workforce, they’re also largely defining today’s workplace. Where employers once called the shots, employees are calling them now, and one of those shots is that employers (and teams) see to it this is a great place to work. Not just good. Great. Shy of that, good luck.
Like all challenges, there’s opportunity here. Great opportunity, in fact. For decades, we’ve coached teams and their coaches (that’s you, Doc) to and how to deliberately have the culture they want to have, rather than the culture that just sort of happened. Not that it’s bad, it just might not be good enough…not deliberate enough… in the new normal. And as a team coach, it seems to me a more paramount need for team-retaining culture is a good thing. We should embrace going there, Colleagues, and it will pay off.
As I think about the past four decades, it seems the guiding object of practice development (some call that practice management) was growth. Although practice growth is still important and exciting and forever will be, the guiding practice development object of this day, without a doubt, is TEAM. And the foundation of team, of course, is culture. We can control that one, and win our share of The Great Return, if we choose to do so (and we’ve discussed strategies for doing it in posts we can go back and revisit). So let’s do that, Friends. Let’s bias things to get this practice fully staffed again and keep it that way!
Like all THRIVE content, the purpose of BOWEN’S BLOG and SUMMIT TALK Podlecture conversations is to keep us driving together toward IMPACT. If something here has struck a chord, shoot us an email or give us a call and let’s talk it out! Tbowen@mythrivecoaches.com or 402-794-4064.