How Leaders Can Retain Their Team
High employee turnover poses several risks to a business or company. This can result in disruption of routines, decreased productivity, and a decline in team morale leading to resignations. Retaining talented employees requires more than just offering higher salaries and benefits.
Employees are looking for a business or company that is more aligned with their focus, namely one that can support mental health, well-being and culture. Even though many companies offer different remuneration and benefits, there are still many that fall short of targets and fail to retain employees.
The problem lies in the mismatch between priority values for employees and the company's perception of employee priorities. McKinsey studies show that companies believe lack of compensation, work-life balance, and poor mental health are the biggest factors leading to resignations. However, the reality is that companies do not consider their employees as important.
The goal of employee retention cannot be limited to improvement alone. Structural and cultural changes must also start by discussing two core priorities, namely a lack of value and a sense of belonging.
What Can Leaders Do?
A team is not only a responsibility for a company, but also for the leaders within the team themselves. A leader needs to have the skills to progress beyond a results-based approach to a more holistic socio-cultural approach by applying the following steps:
Make People Feel Valued
Remuneration is still a significant motivator for employees, they want to know that they are valued as people more than just cogs in a company machine.
Show your team that leaders and the company care about their lives, careers, and well-being. This can be demonstrated by development and learning, clear career progression, and measures of work-life balance.
Investing in employee development not only provides clear career advancement, but can also show employees that the company cares about their career growth and is thinking about maintaining long-term relationships.
Show your company cares about the mental health and well-being of employees, and that there are steps that need to be taken to maintain work-life balance. Some actions include offering:
- Health day (wellness day)
- Flexible hours
- Establish communication expectations outside of work hours
- Encourage the principle of autonomy
Investing in employee mental health is not only an obligation and responsibility of the employer, but can also bring financial benefits to the company. Any funds spent on successful mental health programs will return more than twice the average spent.
The biggest challenge for companies is trying to build the right culture and environment. After that, note the possibility of adopting these measures. Company leaders have an important responsibility to analyze and evaluate whether they can build a more positive environment and have value for the team.
Building a Sense of Belonging
In the work environment, cultivating a sense of belonging can make employees more confident in their work and can increase performance by up to 56% based on the Better Up report, The Value of Belonging at Work: Investing in Workplace Inclusion.
Initiatives targeted at building ownership have often traditionally been brick-and-mortar, but in recent years there has been a shift towards remote or virtual working.
The existence of a remote work system encourages companies to look for new ways to stay connected with employees in order to build a sense of belonging to the company. Some examples of initiatives that can be implemented virtually include:
- Introducing a community led by fellow employees
- Implement new collaborative technologies
- Invite input with two-way evaluation and system implementation
- Introduce benefits with inclusive targets
Inclusively targeted benefits, such as additional childcare allowance, can let employees know they are in the know and can increase feelings of inclusion in the company environment. Apart from that, utilizing new platforms such as Discord as a discussion and chat room by utilizing a smooth channel system, can create a better sense of 'togetherness' and virtual collaboration in teams working remotely. Through increasingly easy-to-use tools and technology, it can help reduce communication, relationship and cultural barriers in remote teams.
A true commitment to building a sense of belonging must be embedded in company practices and culture. One of the best ways to evaluate organizational practices and culture is to apply the DEIB framework. DEIB is an acronym for diversity, equality, inclusion and belonging.
Caring for Employees
Caring for your employees is not a revolutionary concept, but with life becoming increasingly fast, growing and complex, companies also need to adapt to existing changes in order to care for their employees.
Social responsibility is no longer just an additional focus, but needs to be the main focus for companies to maintain healthy employees and teams. This will then lead to the security and success of a business or company.
Not all employees have flexible working hours and exclusive benefits. While this can trigger positive things for employees and the company, the most important thing is the feeling of being valued as a human being. Therefore, companies have a role in helping to make this happen for the sake of positive development for each individual, society, the work environment, and for the company itself.
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Every employee certainly has the capacity related to the workload that can be completed. Getting additional work will certainly cause the quality of work to decline, as will the employee's health. If you are experiencing this, definitely tell your boss that you are experiencing excess workload.
Unfortunately, this situation is sometimes less favorable for many employees. Many superiors often judge that those who have excess work are just lazy employees and complainers. For this reason, you need a strategy in communicating with your superiors to get the best results.
How to Tell Your Boss You're Overworked
The thing that needs to be paid attention to is to avoid the impression of complaining or just looking for pleasure. Here are a number of steps you can take to tell your boss that you are overloaded with work.
1. Plan a meeting
Considering this is a work matter, you still have to do it in a professional manner. Find the right time to invite your boss to discuss this issue one-on-one. With a scheduled meeting, you will make this chat important for all parties.
It's better not to hold sudden meetings. That way, you can note down everything that needs to be discussed at the meeting.
It would be even better if you provide a brief discussion of the meeting agenda. This will also give your boss the opportunity to think about solutions to all possibilities regarding the results of the meeting.
2. Provide solutions without complaining
A way of expressing dissatisfaction and disappointment with a situation is definitely a complaint. If you do this, you will be labeled a lazy employee.
The way to avoid complaints from coming out of your mouth is to provide solutions related to the workload. Convey that this is a team problem and not an individual problem. If the work is too much, the solution that needs to be done is to increase the number of personnel to complete it or create a priority scale.
Maybe the solution to adding employees could be a new problem for all companies. However, making a priority scale should be done by anyone. Your boss must know which work needs to be done first and which can be put aside or even eliminated.
3. Tell the truth based on experience
You also need to be honest about your experience in completing the work. Describe all the work at hand and the factors that need to be considered when doing it. These factors will of course affect the processing time and level of difficulty of a job.
Then, make an assumption that one or two jobs can be delegated or done together with other people. It's possible that the time needed could be much shorter. Also convey that this short time will also be of added value to the company's finances.
4. Provide views on delegating work
There is always good and bad in taking a step. However, your boss needs to know about the views of work delegation in a business and employees. Of course everyone will get an impact from this work.
Taking work away from you and giving work to someone else will probably make them resent you. It could be that this will cause new conflicts within the team. Of course, this risk will not be taken by your boss.
On the other hand, there are good things to be gained from delegating this work. First, your workload will certainly be reduced so you can maintain the quality of your work. This will definitely be liked by all superiors.
Second, people who are given additional burdens from you will also gain new experiences. This will of course be good for the employee because they will gain additional experience and skills. Of course this will also be an added value for the company.
5. Invite colleagues to help
Expecting your boss to understand everything you say is also sometimes unwise. It could be that your boss will not make changes related to your workload. If that's the case, try to give a signal to your coworkers.
You can hope that someone can take on some of the work to lighten your load. If they don't, at least you've given your coworkers a warning. If all conditions do not change, it means it's time for you to look for a new job.
That's a way to signal to your boss that you are overloaded with work. Communicating this allows the entire team to continue working comfortably in business development.
Career journeys sometimes make someone feel difficult or lack motivation. However, this usually also provides encouragement for self-improvement. There are many efforts that can be made to continue to understand situations that occur in the workplace.
If someone has solid principles in life, they tend not to be afraid of being in a difficult position. However, strong support is also needed to achieve this position.
This can not only be achieved with your own efforts, but also with the support of your environment.
Carrying out self-improvement can encourage someone to be more motivated and even able to inspire themselves and those around them. For this reason, you can carry out self-improvement as a way to discover your potential.
What is Self Improvement?
The process that occurs when carrying out self-improvement does not only occur as an achievement to the end point. You may have to go through several stages until you finally reach a goal that you wanted to realize from the start.
Self improvement is a long process that involves self-awareness, new learning, and even discovery of one's potential to move from one situation to another.
You also need to remember that the self-improvement process does not happen instantly, you may need to overcome your fears to be able to move and develop yourself.
Even though it is not easy, self-improvement is an important part of a person's life. This is a process of understanding all situations as normal and human.
How to Do Self Improvement
When you work, you certainly spend more time working so a lot of things happen there. In order to go through the process well, here's how to carry out self-improvement at work.
1. Focus on your strengths
The process of self-development should not be understood as a way to cover up weaknesses because this will make the process difficult. You have to do self-improvement with the aim of developing your talents or excelling in things you like.
2. Declutter
The decluttering process means letting go of the parts of yourself and your environment that no longer serve you. When you declutter, you make room for new experiences. This will result in awareness and freedom of one's own growth and allow you to see the direction you want to take.
3. Do self-reflection
Ask yourself critical questions. Gain meaningful insights on how to inspire others. Think about the impression you want to make on other people when answering these questions.
You can also look for constructive feedback to be able to respond to other people better. This allows you to grow more quickly because others reveal things you can't see yourself. From that stage you can make adjustments, dream more and achieve.
4. Partner with a mentor
Find a mentor or friend who can be a responsible companion. You can rely on them to provide support to keep you on the right track. Their role can be a powerful mechanism that can help you move forward and achieve the desired results in a subtle way.
5. Start small
A person's achievements are made through small and consistent steps. While it's possible, you don't need to make a big leap all at once. That's not always a good start. When in doubt, start from small actions to produce positive achievements starting with yourself.
6. Keep moving
The biggest mistake that is often made when carrying out self-development is giving up on a process. If you choose to challenge yourself and grow, stick with it. The learning process requires not only stable periods, but also moments of success and failure.
7. Always be curious
Curiosity drives you to always find out more, question, and respond wisely. Curiosity arises whenever you adopt a “beginner’s mind.” You reorganize everything you already know to see everything as if for the first time to be free from bias and previous experiences.
That's how you can start self-improvement at work. This process must be understood as a long series of processes to develop your ability to stay motivated in the work environment. That way, you will continue to respond positively to all situations while inspiring others.
“To succeed is to thrive and be respected.”
Expectation is the cornerstone of all actions. It drives an elementary scholar to pull an all-nighter before the day of the exam. It prompts an athlete to showcase their best performances in competitions. It compels business leaders to implement significant changes, to further drive their corporations forward in not only crucial times but also during periods of sustained growth and evolving market landscapes. Expectation provides individual guidance into stepping forward.
As members of society, expectations also come inevitably to the younger generation. These young generations carry hopes and expectations to become the next leader. They have been told to excel and succeed in everything since they were young; to be indoctrinated that the burden of making a better environment and life for their society, family, and self is theirs to carry. These propositions are not entirely wrong as such expectation is a mantra that shapes individuals into proactive contributors to the betterment of their society, family, and personal well-being. However, to some, these expectations also pose a threat to young people for the problem with expectations is that it didn’t come standalone but with actions and results. Results of which one cannot predict all of the time.
The uncertainty of it seems to be bigger than it seems because the pressure to excel can lead to anxiety, making the fear of making mistakes become paralyzing. For this reason, some may avoid taking on bigger responsibilities and opportunities as these confront them with the risks of being perceived as incompetent.
Breaking Through the Inertia
From the human resources perspective, such a phenomenon is regrettable, for someone with a lot of potential might remain stagnant due to fear. This stagnation not only deprives organizations of the valuable contributions that could arise from unlocking the untapped potential but also impedes the holistic development and fulfilment of individuals within the professional context. However, such a phenomenon is not bound to eternity. There are several steps one can implement to break through the inertia:
Challenge Negative Thoughts.
Recognize and confront negative thoughts and self-doubt. Substitute negative self-talk with positive affirmations and constructive beliefs regarding one’s capabilities. By proactively addressing and transforming negative thought patterns, individuals can cultivate a more empowering mindset, fostering self-confidence and unlocking their full potential for personal and professional success.
Develop a Growth Mindset.
Seize challenges as chances for growth and learning. Acknowledge that skills can be honed through dedication and effort over time. Embracing this approach not only fosters personal development but also enhances adaptability, resilience, and the capacity to navigate future professional challenges with confidence and competence.
Seek Mentorship and Support.
Seek guidance and advice from mentors or experienced colleagues while also sharing concerns and challenges with a supportive network to gain valuable perspectives. Embracing this collaborative approach not only enriches personal development but also facilitates a dynamic exchange of insights, fostering a culture of continuous learning and professional growth.
Take an Actual Step.
By taking an actual step, one can build momentum and confidence in their ability to handle larger responsibilities. Each completed step serves as evidence of your competence and contributes to the overall goal of professional growth. Remember that life serves as a continuous learning platform for people to grow.
Article by Arvica Salwa Fitriani Masrukin)
