Wellbeing : A Top Priority for Employee Retention

 Tune in to my conversation with Chief People Officer and Executive Coach, @Alicia Gill in this week’s episode of 9 to 5 wellness.

In today's fast-paced work environment, where reskilling and recruiting are constant challenges for managers, 💼 focusing on employee wellbeing has become a top priority for retaining talent. 

Reskilling to keep up with the rapid pace of technological advancements while navigating pandemic-induced resignations has put additional pressure on managers to bridge the skills gap within their teams. ⚡️

🌟Join us as we explore the importance of investing in employee wellbeing programs to foster a culture of wellness and enhance retention rates. 

💰This shift towards prioritizing employee wellbeing not only benefits the workforce but also helps in mitigating the financial and non-financial costs associated with recruiting and training new employees. 💼

📝 The key topics that we have dived into are:

1️⃣ The Financial and non-financial costs of recruiting and training new employees?

2️⃣ How a culture of well-being leads to employee retention?

3️⃣ Is the great resignation behind us?

4️⃣ How has the great resignation driven higher salaries?

5️⃣ What can professionals do to support their own well-being at work?

Our guest, Alisia Gill is the Founder & CEO of Navista. She brings over 20 years of experience, most recently in the role of Chief People Officer - including being the first ever to hold that role in NYC government. An economist, coach and advisor to Fortune 100 and Inc5000 companies and their employees. 

Alisia Gill helps business & HR leaders avoid the costly impact of losing their critical employees, and empowers professionals to navigate their careers with authenticity and confidence. Alisia is a consultant, executive coach and professional speaker.

You can learn more about Alisia Gill at:

www.navista.co
www.linkedin.com/in/alisiagill

Don't miss out on the valuable insights and practical strategies for prioritizing employee wellbeing in the workplace to keep top talent. 🤝

🌟 🌟 🌟 If you liked this episode and would like to learn more about wellness training and workshops offered by 9 to 5 Wellness, email us at info@aeshathair.com. You can learn more about our programs at: https://toneandstrengthen.com/workshops-trainings/. 🌟 🌟 🌟

My passion is helping organizations create a culture of wellness, and I do this by setting up health programs that prioritize the most important asset they've got – their employees. Cheers to a healthier and happier journey ahead!

🌟 🌟 🌟 You can learn more about ME- the host at https://www.aeshatahir.com

Follow me on IG and LI to learn more

https://www.instagram.com/tone_and_strengthen/

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Transcript

 Welcome to 9 to 5 wellness show. Today I'm really excited about this topic that we are going to talk about and we're talking about employee retention.   I chose this topic because this is a very challenging time for managers. Alongside their day to day roles many are facing never ending cycle of re skilling.

And recruiting on their teams. The pace it's happening at at this time, where most of the jobs will be radically transformed by technology in the next decade, is challenging to keep up with for a lot of the managers and HR professionals. That's why I was like, we really need to talk about it today on the show.

Managers are being asked to close the skills gap at the same time that they're responding to pandemic prompted resignations. That brings us to the fact that retaining talent is so crucial for organizations and we are going to talk about how you can ensure that employees stay with your organization  To learn about this topic.

I have a very special guest with me today.  , Alicia Gill. She is the founder of Novista. She brings over 20 years of experience,  in the role of chief people officer, including being the first ever to hold that role in New York City government. An economist, coach and advisor to Fortune 100 and Inc.

5, 000 companies and their employees, Alicia helps businesses and HR leaders avoid the costly impact of losing their critical employees and empowers professionals to navigate their careers with authenticity and confidence. Alicia is a consultant, executive coach, and professional speaker. Welcome to the show, Alicia. 

Thank you. Thank you for having me. Whenever I have the guests over, I would like to start with their journey. What inspired you to focus on employee  retention solutions, employee well being and the role you have today as an executive coach? 

Okay. Well, I, I must say for me, one of the most important things, the thing that drives me is  Understanding what it takes for businesses to be successful and what it takes for people, for professionals to employees to be successful.

And with my background as an economist, I, I sort of see things in a very particular kind of way. And when I look at things like employee attrition or turnover. I see that as a market failure, right? So you've got people who made a decision to join a company and organization because they thought it would benefit them along a whole host of dimensions.

And then when they decide to leave, it's because something happened, something changed, either their perception of the organization, something the organization did or didn't do or something that happened in their personal lives that causes them to make a decision, a non trivial Non risk free decision to actually quit.

Right? So I became very interested in solutions that would make it possible for businesses to prosper and not be blindsided or, you know, not fail to take proactive measures to ensure this doesn't happen, but also to ensure that employees are getting their needs met so that they can make decisions that make the most sense for them as it relates to where they actually want to work.

So that's why I work with organizations and companies and with employees.  

Right, right. It's  crucial. It's so important to focus on both.  The work you're doing is  impactful. I'm sure it helps a lot of lot of organizations.  Thank you so much for doing that and for helping us out today. So one of the things that  coming up in the conversations and even as I was actually posting this LinkedIn live event was the financial cost associated with recruiting and training new employees to replace the ones we have lost.

And there could be a number of reasons, just like you mentioned, for them to leave the company. But when we talk about the numbers that the organization has to deal with and I know as an economist, you're the perfect person to answer this question. I was reading an article and it said that it costs one to two times Employee's annual salary.

If that employee is, you know, salary based to replace that employee. So tell us a little bit more about, the financial cost associated with it and what we can do to save money there. 

 You know, it's interesting. I want to point out too that there are financial and non financial costs.

When attrition is getting out of control and the non financial costs have a very long tail because they have to do with reputation and things like that brand winning awards. And, you know, how this shows up on glass door and all, you know, all these other things. So I don't want to not Yeah.

emphasize that. But as it relates to financial impacts, well, there are so many and it really does depend on the role. But I'll just throw a couple of things out there. It is not uncommon for when somebody leaves the company to make the decision that, oh, my goodness, we want to, we don't want this to happen again.

There's a perception that people primarily leave because of money. So maybe now they'll start hiring, they'll backfill these people at a higher salary. Okay, so now we've just upped the salary level in the company. For certain of these roles especially key roles that need to be filled really quickly an external recruiter will be used.

So, okay, so now we have 10, 15, 20 percent of the higher salary that we're paying to a recruiter. It's also true and very common that companies will take the measure of, you know, giving bonuses or some type of financial incentive to the people who are left behind as a statement of goodwill and understanding that, you know, that this is going to be you know, hard for them in the short term, maybe the longterm.

So those are some, you know, immediate checks.  that can get written. There is also the productivity hit, right? It can take sometimes three months, sometimes even longer to fill a position. And while that is happening, you've got everybody else who's picking up the weight. if we look at a person's salary as an indicator of the value that they're providing to the company, which is what it should be, right?

That's what the, you know, so now we're seeing 10, 15 percent reduction in their output because they're spending time making up for the people who have left, right? So it's  the hit that you take. During the recruitment process, but it's also the hit that you take in the several months or even longer that it takes to bring the new person up to speed.

And you had mentioned training. So now sometimes there's also a dollar amount to the training. So it's the amount that you're spending on the training. It's. The additional productivity hit of the people behind who are upscaling the person so that they know how to do it. And then all of the adjacent teams that have to work with the people who have left, whose workflows have been impacted, relationships that have to be developed, right?

Like there are all these things, not to mention. the impact on the manager on the teams where these people are leaving, because now they have to motivate, right? They have to do some training themselves. They have to get into the trenches at the same time as they're interviewing candidates. They're reviewing resumes.

They're having conversations with HR, all of these things. And then everybody who's interviewing the candidate, right? So there's all of these Impacts to the rest of the organization that happened because one or multiple people are leaving.  And then some of the non financial ones I talked about, you know, this happens a lot. 

It's not uncommon that people who are unhappy do not hesitate to share their displeasure on Glassdoor.  That review is going to live forever. You can't take them off. And you know, when people who are happy, they have a tendency not to report that. Right? So, you know, there's a bias, negative, you know, a negative bias to that.

And then if this really gets out of control, there is the reputational hit. Maybe you're not winning as many employer awards as you used to win. And now the recruiter, the internal recruiter, perhaps is sitting out here saying, Okay. It's really hard to recruit people here because of how people now feel about this company as a place where people don't stay.

For whatever reason that they can make up for themselves, rightly or wrongly, and  that often results in paying higher salaries in the company as a premium to make up for that risk that people are taking on for joining the company. So as you can see, this can really spiral out of control. Yes, 

the fact that the reviews would go on Glassdoor and all of these aspects like recruiting, interviewing, hiring, of course, the cost associated with it, the lost wages and the weight that the rest of the team is going Taking when you know you lose an employee while you're filling the position. Then there's orientation and training that you mentioned and lost productivity because of because of all of this, right?

It's going to lead to a culture which isn't inducive to you. Wellness and well being of employees. And just like you said, Okay, now we're having issues hiring employees at this company, right? If your company's culture is it has  capability to attract good talent.

It would have to be connected to the well being of employees if you're prioritizing the well being of employees. You know, I'd really want to  use your experience and understand what is the need for well being programs at organizational level? 

Yeah, well, you know, it's interesting companies, especially the ones that are scaling. It can be really easy to focus on the business as a going concern. You want the business to be successful. You want to grow. You want to be profitable, all those things. But once you're upsized, It's very important to now start thinking of yourself, not just as a company in a business, but also as an employer.

Right? So now you're dealing with people, people who are putting their career in your hands. Right? And their life in your hands in many ways, right? If we think about wellness as the health that people feel from a dimensions of the physical health and mental health, their sense of belonging, the financial stability they have, their sense of purpose.

These are all things that employers have an outside influence on, right? In many cases, the data says they have more of an influence than the person's family has.  So a lot of companies don't take this on board. They feel they hired the person to do the job. They'll just do the job. They'll give them some benefits.

Maybe we'll do, you know, free beer 

or something like that, 

you know, do something fun. And then it'll all be fine. But I think COVID has taught us all that it's, it's not. As simple as that, right? So a corporation or businesses organizations need to be thinking about what are the conditions they're creating in this company?

What is the actual culture there? What do they want it to be? Right? So that people can make a decision as to whether or not that's a good fit for them. It may be, it may not be, but the companies that aren't thoughtful about that and proactively deciding who they want to be are introducing a lot of risk into the organizations because they haven't necessarily thought through how that's going to land with the people who work for them.

And so if physical health, mental health,  financial health, all of these things matter. Then we need to figure out at the enterprise level. What are some of the programs and benefits and perks that we can put in place that are going to be material for the individuals that work there? Right? And it's not a generic answer.

Part of this is going to be learned through things like employee surveys. Some of this will be learned by things like salary benchmarking, right? If you observing that in certain job roles. The market rate for those jobs has gone up and you're not paying attention to that. Well, now people who work for you in those roles, they're financially going backwards. 

That's going to have an impact on how they feel working for you, right? So you need to be on top of that, but it's also true that people make decisions about going or staying for a highly individual reason.  So it's very important for the managers to whom everybody reports. Everybody reports to the managers, right?

So it's very important for managers to be attuned. to what they are seeing. Are they seeing people calling sick very often? Are they noticing a change in motivation? What are some of the things that we can train them to be on the lookout for so that action can be taken? Because if not addressed, people will, they will leave.

Why would they stay it? You know, people have to optimize for their own situation and part of how they assess their situation is what is happening with their wellness,  and they're not going to tolerate an environment where their wellness unless they're in, you know, they have no choice. Maybe they don't write that there are people in that scenario, but given a choice,  people will tend to not stay in environments that are not meeting their needs. 

As a manager, it's our job to find out, like, why, why are people leaving? Is there a trend? Is there a pattern? That brings me to another question, which I really want to ask you.  I've been hearing that the great resignation is behind us.

You know, great resignation where people voluntarily left jobs after pandemic since like 2021. So what do you think? Should companies just stop worrying about losing employees at this time?  

Oh, no.  So you know, yes, it's true that since, you know, the great resignation, let's just call that the 2021 2022 period where we did see quit rates rise significantly.

Yes, that's true. But I don't think we're ready to say that turnover. Employee attrition is not an issue. Right. Just for a data point in 2023 in the United States, 3. 5 million people quit their jobs every month,  right? So yes, it's a lower number than to a couple of years ago, but it's still a high number.

And it's also true that even before the pandemic, the quit rate in the United States has been steadily increasing, right? And we're still higher than that level. Okay. So the, you know, and there are a lot of reasons for that, right. The barriers to exiting a job are lower than they've ever been. There's less of a stigma to leaving a job.

There was a, there was a time where if you had, you know, job experiences on your on your resume where your tenure was less than two years, that was a red flag. 

Right. 

And so people would sort of put up with the job to get to that magic a, you know, two year number or sometimes even longer depending on the level of seniority of the job.

And that's just not a thing anymore, right? So it's just, it's easier for people to leave. And so people who have the option to leave, if they're not getting their needs met, take that option. Right. And employers need to be aware of that and take proactive steps to do something about that, because if they don't, then they're accepting financial and business risks associated with particularly key employees leaving. 

And most employers aren't looking at the issue with that level of granularity or even measuring the impact of attrition on the organization.  

Right, right. So I want to dig a little bit more deeper into , what companies can do and what managers can do to support the wellness of their employees, because as we talked about it a little bit earlier, that it's the culture, it's the company's culture that's going to attract the most.

Top talent and, you know, have them stay and they would be able to stay there. They would be motivated to stay there. So what kind of support system can the managers provide to employees?  

Well, I think the first step is what kind of company do you want to be? Right. What kind of company do you want to be?

What is the value proposition? Why should anyone even work there?  I don't think that people give some thought. It's not that it's not just because it's a great job. It's not just because they get to work with the latest technology, right? It's a little bit deeper than that. It needs to be explored. What is, what type of, with the conditions that we're creating here, what is, what are we observing as the impact on people's physical and mental health?

In this company, what do we think the absence of a certain policy, what impact did we expect that to have on the population that works here? If we are a high, a hard driving organization that has made the decision to be a top payer, you know, high salaries and this and that, then the type of person. Who will come to that organization if they're aware that that is the organization and they're, they're entering it eyes wide open in their ability to tolerate certain types of conditions, they're different  than companies for which that is not true.

There's some companies that are very mission based. So they, they have that sense of fulfillment, which is also helping and feeding their wellness. But that doesn't mean you can forget about some of the other things that are important. Do they have a sense of belonging? Do they see a connection between what they do and the mission, right?

Are they, you know, maybe they're not going to be the top payer because they're getting other benefits, but are we making sure that they are keeping a pace? Right? There are many factors that have to be looked at. It's not a simple thing. It's not, you know, maybe it's soft, but it's certainly not unimportant to start looking at this and observing this.

And, you know, the first step is caring about it. The second step is deciding what who you want to be. The third step is making sure you measure it. You measure it at the enterprise level and you you. Yeah. You skill you upskill your managers ensure that they can observe it. At the level of the individual employee. 

 That's where I know you really help the organizations with the executive coaching for the managers so that they can take all these steps, implement all these steps in their organization. But You know, recently, I've been working with a few organizations. And just like you said that the managers want to create that culture of collaboration belonging.

However,  when I go and talk to the individual employees, now they have their own set of Individual values, right? So they're bringing, you know, everybody brings their whole self to work and they're bringing their values with them. So what is the most important thing professionals can do to support their own wellness at work?

How can they take responsibility for themselves? 

 I love this question. And a lot of the work I do is actually not with the managers.  Right. It's what the employees themselves who, you know, perhaps are the most critical, you know, to the organization that if they left, you know, the organization, the company would be in a world of hurt.

Right. But I think the answer to this for the individual, the professional who is feeling a sense that they're not getting their needs met. which can be the driver of the wellness challenge.  It's very important to get some specificity around why they feel that way, right? So I talk about making sure that each person has a clear sense of what their personal and professional North star is.

Okay. So what are the specific needs that they have, the aspirations that they have, the values they have? As you spoke about, what are they really interested in? You know, maybe they're not even interested in what  that job is even about. And you wonder why are you so stressed out? It's because you don't ultimately care about the thing.

Or, you know, what are your talents?  Exactly. You know, if those are the things that define your North star, get really clear, right? There's some times when I speak to people who, you know, as chief people officer, you hear a lot of things, right? And they come and they say, well, you know, you know, my career isn't progressing.

And I asked the question, well, what does progress look to you look like to you? I want to be a manager. Okay. So why do you want to be a manager? Well, you know, do, do you like to behave in strategic ways? Do you feel comfortable delegating? Do you feel, I asked all these questions and sometimes it does not equal being a manager.

They had all this upset about not being a manager when in reality. They didn't actually want to do the things that managers do, right? So it's very, it's very important for people to have crystal clarity on what their North Stars are. Sounds like something easy, but it's absolutely not.  But it will help them understand the delta between the North Star and their own personal requirements as a professional and as a person, and the experience they are actually having. 

Yeah. 

Right. So that they can understand why they're having the wellness experience that they're having. And they can decide, well, a, they can communicate that to the managers and hopefully managers are skilled enough to do something with that information. But so that they can optimize for their own situation, for their own wellness and decide if they're getting more than less of their needs met where they are.

Because if they're not, and if the employers don't step up.  Then you can't expect them to stay.  

Yeah,  the clarity, the professionals need clarity on their goals, on their purpose.  Only then we can identify What  are their actual needs and if the goals that they are setting for themselves are in congruence with their values set of values or not.

And then we have to then take a look at if it is in congruence with the set of values. of the company or not.  That's right. So that's where I love how you just termed it your North Star because that's always going to guide you,  in the right direction. So Alicia, this is amazing.

Thank you so much for sharing all of this information  for our listeners and viewers who want to get in touch with you, learn more about you. Where can they find you?  

Thank you. The best place to find me is on LinkedIn. So you'll see me talking about these topics. I support companies in this. I think it's really important for not just HR, but for the entire C suite to be caring about this.

This is a business problem. This is not just an HR problem.  The everybody in the workforce reports to everyone else in the C suite other than HR, right? So it's it's their problem. It's their employees and they need to be invested in this. They need to put the same rigor around managing the risk that this. 

That this can can pose as they do with every other serious investment that they make. And if they don't, it's at their peril. So I enjoy very much working with companies that get that so that we can understand what it takes to retain these critical people, how we can make sure that they know what their North Star is.

So the companies can have. Some tactics and the real strategy very quickly as to what it's going to take to retain their people and to make a decision as to whether or not they're not, you know, whether or not they're willing to do it and then understand that there's a risk and they have to do something about that.

Right. So that's what I do with companies. And then with employees, with professionals, it's really helping them understand a North star so that they can make. Decisions about their career that are authentic to them and that enable them to demonstrate what they uniquely bring and have confidence in that and use that to make all of the decisions.

All the other decisions you want to make about your, your career and where you want to work become much easier. Once you have that clarity around who you are using the north star concept or something similar to it.  

Yeah,  you're mentioning clarity because clarity for the organizations, right, for the whole team, for the upper management and the HR professionals HR team and clarity for the professionals themselves, right, because once you have clarity, confidence follows, 

so a lot of times confidence is like, I say it's lack of clarity around what goals you have, what aspirations you have, really digging deep down into your values, finding the North Star, and then following the North Star. And that North Star can be for the companies, or it can be for the individual employee.

 Any parting thoughts?  

No, but I'm glad that you're raising this. I think this is a perfect topic for this podcast. 

And I hope that the wellness employee retention risk is something that is increasingly thought of. In organizations because it's the right answer for business, and it's the right answer for employees for sure. So thank you.  

Exactly. Wellness is a business strategy. And if the companies can prioritize wellness of their employees, they will see the return on investment coming back much stronger.

So thank you again for being on the show today, Alicia.