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From Informed Decisions: Conversations and Q&A
with Randall Craig and
Ronja Francoeur
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Retention, Engagement, and Employee Career Planning
Retention, Engagement,
and Career Planning
About this episode:
Your organization has a strategic plan, and presumably it includes the people who will carry it out. But are they as motivated and engaged as they could be? Is everyone in your organization truly aligned on your longer-term goals? And beyond the leadership and the high potentials, do you have a culture of delegation and succession planning?
Enter career planning, a shared responsibility of both the organization, and each team member. This month’s Leadership Q&A session explores this connection, and how leaders can drive both engagement and retention.
Topics Discussed (with timestamps)
• Introductory concepts on retention, engagement and career planning (01:06)
• Retention and career planning for everyone in the org chart, or focus on senior roles? (04:25)
• What does employee retention mean to you, and how do you address it with your clients? (06:08)
• Employee retention and employee engagement best practice recommendations are always the same—there are no varying theories—yet we see unimpressive retention and engagement numbers across the board. Why is that? Are companies not following best practices? Or are they hard to follow? Or are the “best practices” not enough? (08:19)
• Aligning employees with a greater purpose… but what about when a company doesn’t have a greater purpose? (12:55)
• A wholistic approach to running a business... and is the trend to move away from that (15:01)
• The impact of a lack of leadership or uninspired leadership (17:23)
• Randall in the hotseat: In your companies, when your key employees left the company, can you look back and share what you might have done differently? Any lessons learned? (20:08)
• It used to be that a person stayed at the same company his whole career. Now it seems employer/employee career loyalty and longevity is a thing of the past… but is there a path to get back there? (25:20)
• The easiest way to get a raise or a promotion is to move to another company… is there a better way? (30:27)
• Of the standard organizational health metrics, there is no metric that measures how many internal promotions vs. external hires… should there be one? (34:00)
• When no employee has 'done it before': Do we hire an external with the previous experience, or give it to a high-performing internal? (36:42)
• Career planning conversations with your manager… but you want their job: How do you have the conversation? (40:06)
• Employee appreciation is so important, and yet expectations for demonstrating appreciation for employees not part of any standard manager’s performance appraisal template—why the gap? (45:44)
• Thoughts on boomeranging (i.e., when an employee leaves for another job and then wants to rejoin your company). (49:21)
• Exit Interviews: Who should be doing them, and how to create transparency? (53:27)
• Stay Interviews: What is the meta program? What are you trying to unearth? (58:44)
• Gatekeeping: When managers don’t want to promote their high-performers because they don’t want to lose their best people… How can we create a culture where managers are proud when the people they develop get promoted in the company? (01:03:05)
• Nowhere to climb, nowhere to grow: When there isn’t a career path in the org chart, and your people want promotions and new job titles. (01:07:09)
What people said about this session
What people said about the session
Hiring a Business Growth Speaker:10 Good Questions to Ask
“Great session! Lots of points that have been said before but great reminders! We only have five on staff, and listening to this session pointed out our lack of leadership and that there is LOTS of work to be done to create and maintain a healthy culture.” – Camille Austin, Member Relations Specialist, Electrical Contractors Association of Alberta
“Thanks guys, you are brilliant! I am in awe of this wonderful work you do, and how generously you share it. You deserve a much bigger audience because this stuff is gold – not even gold; it’s platinum! The first one of these Q&A sessions I tuned into of the two of you [years ago] was bloody excellent. What I can say is you have maintained that high level of intellect and contribution… and that is not easy to do.
– Donald Cooper, President, The Donald Cooper Corporation
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