How to keep your best employees

At a recent breakfast meeting with business owners, the topic of finding great employees was discussed. It was determined that these employees are rare and their value can be measured in many other ways than just on the bottom line. As important as it is to find great employees, it is even more vital to keep those employees. What does it take to create a work environment that attracts and keeps the best people?

Fortunately, that question has already been answered by the Gallup Organization through an exhaustive study that sifted through about one hundred million questions asked of employees over a 25-year period. This organization has been a world leader in the measurement and analysis of human attitudes and behavior, and they are best known for The Gallup Poll.

Just as a chef takes individual ingredients and combines them to create a delicious meal, the Gallup study had the goal to dissect the core components of an ideal workplace and break it into the essential “ingredients” that were necessary to create a high-performance workplace. Once these elements were discovered, a manager could use the “recipe” to duplicate the environment and produce similar results.

The Gallup Organization searched for those special questions that loyal and productive employees answered positively. After examining one hundred million questions, they discovered that the strength of a workplace could be simplified down to 12 simple questions that capture the most information and the most important information. Like the ingredients of a great recipe, these questions alone may seem rather common and intuitive; yet when all of them are combined and answered positively, the results produce a great work environment that attracts, focuses, and keeps outstanding employees.

You will notice that there are no questions that deal with pay, benefits, or organizational structure. This is because these issues are equally important to every employee—good, bad, or indifferent—and they were eliminated because they don’t help to differentiate a strong from a weak work environment.

Below are the 12 questions adapted from the book, First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently, by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman. Test how your own organization measures up by scoring your workplace with a number from 0 to 5 that best applies to each statement. Here is the scale: 0 = never, 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neutral, 4 = agree, and 5 = strongly agree.

1. I know what is expected of me at work.
2. I have materials and equipment I need to do my work.
3. At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day.
4. In the last seven days, I received recognition or praise for doing good work.
5. My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person.
6. There is someone at work who encourages my development.
7. At work, my opinions seem to count.
8. The mission/purpose of my organization makes me feel my job is important.
9. My co-workers are committed to doing quality work.
10. I have a best friend at work.
11. In the last six months, someone at work talked to me about my progress.
12. This last year, I have had opportunities at work to learn and grow.

If you scored between 50 and 60 you have a great work environment that will both attract and keep great people.

A score between 39 and 49 means you have a good environment that is better than many organizations, but there is room for improvement.

Scoring between 28 and 38 equates to a poor workplace that has low morale, high turnover, and probably low customer satisfaction. You should seriously look at your weak areas and make a plan to strengthen them.

Scoring 27 or less indicates your workers feel undervalued, consider their job only as a source for a paycheck, and they dread Monday mornings. Your organization is in critical condition and it probably has low productivity, a weak financial condition, high turnover, and poor customer satisfaction. You need to do something now, before it’s too late.

All of the business owners at the meeting had great employees and a good work environment. In addition, their company sales and profits were growing, and customer satisfaction was high, while turnover was very low. It is possible to make the changes that produce the above results, if you have the ingredients and the right recipe. We wish you the best of luck in stirring up a great workplace.

(Rik is a business instructor at NMC and Janel is the owner of Positively Outrageous Results. Their work with hundreds of businesses in multiple industries has allowed them to customize guaranteed business enhancement programs. They can be contacted at: biz_results@yahoo.com)