Every day, your greatest asset walks out of the door—your people. What are you doing to make sure that they return?
HR’s primary responsibility is to acquire and develop talent to fuel the company’s growth. Through the interview process, HR identifies talent, but after the offer letters go out, nobody asks why this person decided to join the team or why this person didn’t accept the offer. These are questions related to employee personal and professional motivations.
Motivational Speaking Doesn’t Work
You’ve probably spent $100,000s of dollars on motivational speakers in the past with little to show for it. How can someone who knows very little about your company change its trajectory in less than an hour. In most cases, motivational speakers rile up employees momentarily. But what you want is change that last.
There are other ways to motivate employees besides more money and motivational speakers. Employees have personal and professional goals and challenges that you may already have the assets to support with. When you commit to helping your employees’ succeed personally and professionally, they will commit to you. That means higher retention, high productivity, less turnover, and less burn-out.
We Know What Motivates Millennials
We specialize in motivation for millennials. We’ve done extensive research into the values, motivations, goals, and challenges millennials face. Our research shows that millennials top six values are:
- Education
- Work-life balance
- High responsibility (even if pay doesn’t match)
- Social impact
- Creativity, and
- Entrepreneurship
We believe that you are in the best position to help them. There are many small things you can do now for less than the cost of losing 10 employees that can have huge impact on millennial’s motivation, productivity, and retention. Have you considered organizing an unpaid community service day? Have you considering bringing in a GMAT instructor to the office? Have you considered creating Entry Level I, II, and III check-points?
None of these ideas cost the corporation any money. Non-monetary motivation actually foster collaboration among employees whereas monetary-only motivation tends to breed competition. Time is not money. When you figure out how to save employees time in other aspects of their life, they are willing to give more time to you. And the value created by a 3 year veteran is probably much higher than that of a first year employee.
We Ask Questions That HR Can’t
We focus on understanding the intrinsic motivations of your employees. This requires interviewing, surveying, and consulting with employees. We interview the highest value creating people at the company as well as those who left to understand why and how because we believe that the x-factor to success is knowing your why. We use a customized anonymous survey to gain insight into employee motives and ideas. And finally, we facilitate a conversation between management and employees based on recommendation we co-create to increase alignment with the direction of the organization.
Millennials leaving in droves because their expectations and your reality are different. What if we could decrease number needed to train because we increased retention. Save you money, time.
The Possibility We Create For You
HR will be able to:
- Understand 8 Cylinders of Success of the company and its divisions and communicate them company-wide
- Clearly articulate what motivates their employees and how they measure success and create policy, processes, and programming to support it
- Adjust recruiting practices and its interview process to attract people who want what the organization offers beyond money
- Identify how to use existing assets to support employees’ personal and professional growth, goals, and challenge that take their mind off of work
- Assign people to projects based on their passions
Employees will be able to:
- Articulate their personal 8 Cylinders of Success and determine where they are aligned with the organization
- All employees understand how to succeed within the organization and difference between expectations and reality are settled
- Identify ways to engage their passions into their daily work
- Identify and solve problems they care about within the organization
Successful Examples from Google, Zappos, & Southwest Airlines
Tuition Reimbursement
We’ll help you pursue further education that’s relevant to what you do. You must receive grades of “B” or better. Why a “B” or better? Because we said so. Tuition reimbursement is $12,000 per calendar year.
20-Percent Time
We offer our engineers “20-percent time” so that they’re free to work on what they’re really passionate about. Google Suggest, AdSense for Content and Orkut are among the many products of this perk.
Adoption Assistance
Google assists our employees by offering financial assistance in the adoption of a child. We’ll reimburse you up to $5000 to use towards legal expenses, adoption agencies or other adoption professional fees. Parental leave and take-out benefit also apply.
Free Food
Hungry? Check out our free lunch and dinner – our gourmet chefs create a wide variety of healthy and delicious meals every day. Got the munchies? Google also offers snacks to help satisfy you in between meals.
On-site Doctor
At Google headquarters in Mountain View, California you have the convenience of seeing a doctor on-site.
Shuttle Service
Google is pleased to provide its Mountain View employees with free shuttles to several San Francisco, East Bay and South Bay locations.
Financial Planning Classes
Google provides objective and conflict-free financial education classes. The courses are comprehensive and cover a variety of financial topics.
Other On-Site Services
At Google headquarters in Mountain View, there’s on-site oil change, car wash, dry cleaning, massage therapy, gym, hair stylist, fitness classes and bike repair.
Other Great Benefits
Halloween & holiday party, health fair, credit union, sauna, roller hockey, outdoor volleyball court, discounts for products and local attractions.
Social Outings
Zappos encourages managers to spend 20% of their time go on social outings with employees to build strong bonds
$2000 To Quit
Zappos will pay an employee $2,000 to quit at the end of training. They would rather you quit now if you’re just in it for the money than cost the company later.
5-Weeks of Culture Shock
Zappos has 5-weeks of culture, core values, customer service, and warehouse training for every employee.
No Call Scripts
At Zappos, they believe that the telephone is one of the world’s best branding devices. Therefore, they don’t have call scripts and allow employees to be themselves. There are also no call-times or sale-based performance goals for reps.
Flexible Job Descriptions
Southwest has successfully negotiated flexible job descriptions in all of its union contracts. Every job description ends with this statement: Whatever it takes to get the plane out.
Player Coaches
Southwest has more supervisors per frontline employee than any other airline in the country. They are “player coaches” having managerial authority but also performing the work of frontline workers. The supervisors spend more time than their counterparts engaged in coaching in the form of problem solving and advising the frontline employees.
All Business Is A People’s Business
Southwest places a great deal of importance on hiring people with the right attitude–people with relational competence–you can’t be an elitist. Through training and “job exchange or “Walk a Mile” employees become familiar with other aspects of the work process or jobs they aspire to move into.
Culture Committees
Employees are encouraged to be themselves at work and to openly recognize major events in the lives of employees and their families. Each individual station has a Culture Committee to maintain and strengthen Southwest’s culture and to plan social and charitable events. The Ronald McDonald House, a residence provided to families while their children are undergoing treatment for cancer, is supported by each of the local Culture Committees.
Profit-Sharing
More than other airlines, Southwest compensates its workers in ways other than base pay. It contributes 15% of its pre-tax income to a profit-sharing plan. The flight attendants’ base pay of $23 an hour for a six-year veteran trails the pay at other carriers by as much as $15.
Scoreboarding & Dashboarding
I have worked with my employees to create a scoreboard or dashboard that we can all use to measure their success at any given time. The board has their 3-month key success metrics so that they manager can evaluate their progress at any given moment. I highly recommend bi-weekly or monthly scoreboard meetings where employees present their achievements in the given time period.
Off-Boarding Presentations
Most organizations only engage employees in an on-boarding process, but off-boarding can be equally powerful. If an employee knows that they will have to publicly demonstrate the value they created whenever they decide to leave, they will likely direct their energy at value creating activities.
Employees First
“Convention dictates that a company looks after its shareholders first, its customers next, and last of all worries about its employees. Virgin does the opposite.” – Sir Richard Bronson of Virgin
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