Attracting and retaining top talent is a pressing issue for most business owners. How to balance the increasing expectations of employees in a rapidly evolving world with rising costs of everything connected to running a business?
Inflation is rampant with groceries 25% higher in the past four years. Interest rates are up, making money less accessible. Mental wellness is at an all-time low. People are feeling squeezed on every side.
While sympathetic to the plight of their employees, business owners are not exempt from feeling the same pressure. They must manage rising costs in both their businesses and homes and create workplaces where people want to show up and stay. They hold the tension of post-COVID employee expectations and shrinking profit margins.
A few months back, I was visiting with a business owner about company culture and he told me he wasn’t worried about culture because his employees were lucky to have a job. While I remember hearing that often enough back in the day, that perspective is just not playing well in the modern workplace. Employee expectations have grown to include benefits, culture, flexibility and meaning.
A recent report from isolved shows 76% of HR leaders don't see employee expectations as out of control while 55% of business owners feel that employee expectations regarding the employee experience have escalated. That is a big gap.
I think a lot of business owners and HR leaders get it wrong. They throw benefits around instead of creating a culture of meaning making. I’m not saying health insurance isn’t a big deal. I’m just saying that good health insurance won’t make up the difference for a toxic workplace culture.
Employees want to show up to a workplace where they know that their contribution makes an impact on the team goals. They want opportunities to upskill and promote. They want to feel like the work they do is important and purposeful.
I finished up our Integrated Teams Leadership Series with “Suzie” earlier today and we always end the six-month program with questions around what they enjoyed and did not enjoy about the process. “Suzie” said that she wished a company had invested into her like this when she was younger because she spent so many years doubting herself. She told me of a job in an industry that she absolutely loved but felt unseen and left after three years. She didn’t mention pay or benefits as the reason for her exit; she simply said no one noticed her work. Suzie would probably still be thriving in that industry today if a supervisor had simply taken the time to show her how the work she did made a difference.
Yes, employee expectations can seem a bit unreasonable when you feel your profit margins stretched thin, but maybe you can retain your best talent by imagining together a company that is making a difference in your industry and where everyone knows just how they contribute to the big picture. Making Meaning is a pretty powerful employee retention strategy.
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