6
SMART ONE-ON-ONE ENGAGEMENT SOLUTIONS
Your stay interviews now provide you with lists of requests from each employee. The important difference between these lists and your survey results is that these lists have been provided by individuals in direct, non-anonymous ways. They are far better lists.
Group solutions are out, unless there are clear consistencies in what all employees tell you. Remember, submitting an action plan up the chain that contains more team meetings, new recognition programs, and food-based activities is what led to Gallup telling us that engagement has been stuck for 15 years.
Finding the smartest solutions requires fully knowing your employees’ concerns first, hence the phrase probe deeply, solve completely. I will address five topics that we could anticipate to surface, with probes for gaining more information and solutions for your consideration. These solutions are examples only of course, as you must fit the best fix to each employee’s unique needs.
“I can’t get my work done because _______.”
“I deserve a promotion.”
“I need more money.”
“I have too much work.”
“We need more staff.”
Before starting, let’s put a boundary around these topics. They are the ones most of us anticipate our employees will raise, and some of these situations make us uncomfortable, which is why I’ve included them here. But you should recall from chapter 5 that our research demonstrates that the top request from employees is for better work processes. They don’t usually ask for anything for themselves except for ways to be more productive, and they will feel closer to you if you take steps to help them improve their work. So I will start with this one first.
Most stay interview requests, however, will be unique and may stray far from the five listed previously. I recall training a group of hospital managers where we asked two of them to role-play a stay interview. One played the manager and the other played the employee. The one who played the employee was the real-life food service manager. Her role-playing manager asked question #5, “What can I do to make work better for you?” She replied that she wanted to learn more about computers and about international foods.
The role play continued, and the manager probed for more information. I then stopped the role play and asked the class what ideas they had for helping the food service manager learn more about computers and international foods. Four participants immediately offered these ideas:
Idea #1: “Find three international food websites on her computer and make them favorites so she can easily access them and feels like she’s learned how to use her computer.”
Idea #2: “Buy her a magazine about international foods.”
Idea #3: “While walking to the cashier, a subscription card will fall out of the magazine and onto the floor. Pick it up and get her a subscription. It’ll cost about nine bucks.”
Idea #4: “Ask her how soon she wants to start monthly international food days in the cafeteria, which day of the month, and what the first national foods should be.”
Creative . . . and fast. With most of your employees, good probing will take you far past the normally anticipated discussions about subjects that make you uncomfortable like pay and promotions.
“I Can’t Get My Work Done Because ________”
This is good news because your employee associates making work better with doing more and better work. What’s not to like?
The probes below are generic of course, and your probes must match your employee’s particular job:
How does this impact your productivity?
Are the work processes right, the way we’ve organized the work?
Is the equipment an obstacle, either broken or out of date?
Is there any one person or department holding you back?
What’s the single most important thing I can do to make this better?
The probing direction here is:
WHAT: Which work isn’t getting done?
PROCESSES: Are the absolute right processes in place?
EQUIPMENT: Do you have what you need?
PEOPLE: Is someone or some team slowing you down or not doing their jobs well?
Chances are good that an employee who uses this stay interview opportunity to complain about work processes is a top performer. So unlike the four employee issues that follow, this is a problem you absolutely have to fix. There will be situations where you have to say, “I can’t get you a promotion/raise/less work/more staff,” but on legitimate work process issues, you have to score.
Solutions start with work processes, equipment, and people. Employees who bring this issue have usually thought it through and have fixed opinions. Your job is to take their thinking one level deeper to study how work should be getting done, the tools they have to complete it, and perhaps most importantly the people they must rely on. These people might be beside them or in another department, and you might be challenged to confront a peer manager about how slow work in his department impacts your team.
“I Deserve a Promotion”
This phrase attacks the neurons in our minds because deserve is an emotional word, and it implies many things: that we haven’t done our job correctly since we haven’t already promoted the employee, that a promotion means more responsibility that we think maybe the employee can’t handle, and that a promotion means more pay. It’s a buzzkill for us . . . and we have to hide our nonverbal reaction to it.
Realistically, good managers can anticipate who will ask for a promotion 80 percent of the time, so you should be prepared. Here’s how to respond, by asking the right probes:
Tell me more about that. Why do you think you should be promoted?
If you were me, what are the main things you would look for in an employee to decide if a promotion was right?
What next-level job do you think you deserve? What job is right for you?
What skills do you think are most important for that job?
Do you think you have those skills?
Let’s take those skills one at a time. Tell me about ways you’ve used those skills before.
The probing direction here is:
WHY: Are you thinking promotions come with time in the job or because you have higher-level skills?
WHAT: Tell me what your targeted job is.
SKILLS: Do you know the skills for this job? And do you have them?
Some managers would never get this far if they thought the employee was unqualified for any additional work. They would instead raise the stop sign immediately and say something like, “I just can’t see promoting you at this time.” But this employee has a perspective, an opinion about herself, so it is important to give it a fair hearing. And the more the manager probes, the more the employee hears herself talk about herself.
The previous probes in italics offer several reasonable exits from this discussion. The employee might respond to the first by saying she deserves a promotion based on time in the job, to which you would respond that promotions are based on skills first and effort second. Or the employee might say she doesn’t have a particular job in mind, to which you would coach her to come back with one.
Let’s suppose, though, that you are surprised by her request, that the employee has a specific job in mind, and that you are open to exploring a possible promotion with her. The key word from this point forward becomes skills. I will italicize it going forward to emphasize its importance.
It is easy to assume that we can see each employee’s potential after a few months or a year of work. The distinction here is that she is bringing the fire, that her motivation comes from within versus being something we have to spark. So let’s partner together to see how far this fire can take her.
A next step would be to invite her to observe and interview someone in her targeted job. You would choose someone who not only performs well but also can clearly articulate the skills required, the greatest challenges, and the scenarios the job presents every day. Someone who has a clear vision about their work and can express it. I would meet with this person face-to-face, explain your purpose, and ask for a commitment of unfiltered candor. Tell my employee what really happens here every day, what you like, what you don’t like, what she would have to be prepared for, and what she would need to do best.
Now meet with your employee and say this:
“Good news. I’ve asked Benjamin, who oversees accounts payable, to meet with you for two hours sometime in the next couple of weeks. Benjamin is willing to show you the main parts of his work and also sit with you in the cafeteria afterward to discuss his job and answer your questions. Then you and I can meet together again.
“Here’s how I suggest you prepare. Make a list of every question you have for Benjamin, and keep adding questions while he shows you his job. Then as you ask him your questions in the cafeteria, know that I’ll ask you what the top five skills required for his job are. You can ask him this, too. Then the conversation between you and me will be (1) do you still like this job, (2) what are the top five skills, and (3) where do you rate yourself on these skills?”
All future steps flow from here. You might find the employee no longer wants the job. You might have to coach her to identify the right skills. After creating a skill-building plan, you might have to tell her she can’t master one or more of the skills. Or she might actually earn the promotion. The important thing is you gave her an opportunity and a fair process to carry out her ambition and to try for a promotion.
“I Need More Money”
Need is the word that jumps out, right? As though pay is based on each employee’s individual expenses. But employees don’t always choose words carefully, and sometimes they say whatever comes to mind first. Let’s find out what this employee really wants. Good probes would be:
Tell me why you need more money.
How much more money do you need?
What amount of raise are you looking for?
What ways do you see that you can make more money?
What skills do you have that you can apply to make more money?
What skills can you build that qualify you to make more money?
The probing direction here is:
HOW MUCH: Is what you are asking for realistic or not?
WHY: Have you earned it? Do you have a plan to earn it? Or do you just want it?
HOW: Have you identified ways to earn more money, or is that up to me?
Some employees will take advantage of your open-mindedness by using the stay interview to pop the money question. Others might be holding back from saying that they deserve or want more. And a few might have been truly overlooked for a raise. But all of these cases will total a small percentage of your team—employees don’t ask for raises as much as we fear.
Based on the answers to your probes, here are some directions where this discussion can lead:
You check your employee’s pay against his peers to determine if indeed the employee is underpaid.
Your employee tells you the skills he has or wants to build, so you follow the path outlined previously in “I Deserve a Promotion.”
Your employee tells you the needed raise is based on time in the job, so you redirect his thinking back to skills.
You tell your employee about alternate ways he can earn more, such as through business referrals or employee referrals.
Your employee tells you he requires a 20 percent bump to stay, to which you say that is unrealistic and ask if it is his final position.
Pay is important to all of us, so discussions about it needn’t be tense. Every manager knows she is in the middle—that all employees wonder about it and yet managers have limited authority to address it. Probes like the ones mentioned previously shine brighter light on what is really important to your employee: Is it the actual dollar amount that is important? Or are dollars a substitute for recognition? Or is it about how much they make compared to their peers?
Once all opinions and options have been aired, you might solve your employee’s “need” or you might not. One solution always in your pocket is to offer in-house training to prepare them for possible additional work or even a promotion. The very good news is (1) you can usually suggest a path to follow for more money, and (2) your employee will almost always ask for things other than pay so you can satisfy their requests on these other subjects.
“I Have Too Much Work”
Imagine this phrase in its darkest context. Next comes “I take my work home, I’m a terrible spouse, my kids are watching TV without me, and you expect way too much of me.”
Assuming this employee performs his job well, the good news is he is still with you—for now. Good probes would be:
What’s the first task that comes to mind when you think about too much work?
What work do you usually take home with you?
What do you see as the most important parts of your job?
If you could shed one part of your job, what would you want that part to be?
Can you delegate some work, either on your own or with my support?
What part of your job gives you the most stress?
The probing direction here is:
SCOPE: What are the parts that make your job too big?
PREFERENCES: Which parts would you delegate if you could?
STRESS: What is the single greatest source of stress?
The easy step here is to compare this employee’s workload to peers in the same job, but oftentimes employees who feel they have too much work are in unique jobs, or have unique roles within a job. Should this be so and you have no comparative data to measure against “too much work,” here are other ways to address the issue:
Have the employee stop doing some part of the job, as some work we do contributes little in the big picture.
Identify someone else who can take a big or small chunk of the work, to both reduce the employee’s workload and show your support.
Coach the employee on how to carve out time during the day to do the work he takes home at night.
Give the employee a unique schedule so he can be more productive, such as working from home one morning each week.
Identify the employee’s greatest source of stress, and coach him on ways to reduce it.
Experience tells me too much work and stress are likely partners. Not just because too much work leads to stress, but because too much stress leads to feeling there is too much work. For example, I might really stress out over presenting my project results to my peers because I don’t like making presentations, and sometimes they push back on my conclusions in the presence of others. So the stress I feel when preparing and anticipating these events causes me to feel stress throughout my body for days and weeks, and ultimately it impacts all of my work. Employees might not know this, but they feel it. So savvy managers probe and lead the employee to self-discovery, then address the real cause of too much work.
Employees who confess too much work are taking a risk. There is more bravado in saying bring it on, I can take it—whereas saying I have too much implies weakness or limits on one’s willingness to give one’s best. The very good news is you can listen, probe, take notes, and then or soon after come back with one or two solid ideas to help the employee perform better and, just as importantly, let him know you care.
“We Need More Staff”
This might be the most dreaded comment of all because you, as a manager-in-the-middle, know that acquiring another position is a steep hill to climb. Budgets, expense cuts, and competition with other departments for additional help usually block your path.
An important area for probing is to learn precisely who needs more help. If the employee is using this phrase as a shield for his own work burdens, redirect your approach to “I Have Too Much Work” as seen previously. But realistically, sometimes teams do need more positions whether we can get them or not. This can be seen when supervisors below you say that they have four employees but have more than enough work for five. So your probes would be:
What is the work that you can’t get done?
How is the work assigned to each employee? Who does what?
Can you think of any of this work we can stop doing?
Would it be right to ask another department to help?
Is someone slowing the work down or do all pitch in?
Do you have any performance problems that should be addressed?
Will this amount of work continue or will it slow down? Or ramp up?
Are the processes right? Are there ways we can do this better and faster?
Can better equipment help?
The probing direction here is:
AMOUNT OF WORK: Can we cut it or reassign it?
VOLUME TREND: Will the work decrease or increase? Over what period of time?
PERFORMANCE: Is everyone doing their share?
PROCESSES AND EQUIPMENT: Are we doing things in a smart way?
These probes are generic of course so would need to be tailored to your jobs and work.
Deep discussions after each of these probes might indeed provide a solution that doesn’t involve adding staff. If not, the next line of probes moves to gathering data:
How much work is the team putting out?
How does this amount of work compare to the previous quarter/year?
How much additional work do you forecast for the next year?
How much work are peer departments accomplishing?
What are these peer departments’ staff levels?
These probes imply the work levels are both measurable and predictable, but sometimes they are neither. The ultimate questions are: Do you as their manager believe they need more staff? Have you exhausted every other solution first? If you believe more staff is required, your responsibility is to gather data from all of the probes mentioned previously, package it together clearly and convincingly, and present it upstream. Sometimes teams actually do need more positions, and savvy managers find ways to get them.
Let’s close this chapter with a 10,000-foot view of stay interviews, probes, and solutions. The easy perspective is to look at outcomes, as in: Can I find the right fix? Or what if there isn’t a fix? These outcomes are important but the process is, too.
Managers who conduct stay interviews at a high skill level begin building trust by saying, “I’d like to schedule a meeting with you to learn everything I can do to make work better for you.” Then they ask five questions, probe for more details, and ultimately present ideas to improve their employees’ experiences at work. While doing this, they make eye contact, take notes, and pause to organize thoughts and solutions. In other words, they show they care. This is the trust-building place where we as managers need to be in order to improve our employees’ engagement—and their engagement survey scores.