It’s Not About The Money

By Aaron Fichera

If you have opened a LinkedIn newsfeed in the last two years, or talked with any employer in the U.S., you know the hottest topic is how to attract, retain, and develop the best talent, without breaking the bank on salaries and overhead. An added bonus is to solve this mystery while including and attracting a growing younger labor force, who’s values might not always align to traditional motivators and incentives. It is no mystery why we are in a period known as The Great Resignation.

I have had the fortune of being able to work, teach, and manage individuals across multiple industries and cross-generational organizations. Through trial and A LOT of error, I have found some benefits and standards that companies and operations might want to consider incorporating, as alternatives to traditional compensation solutions. I have found that pointing to these solutions during the interview process and reinforcing within the day-to-day operations has saved great employees who we considered “one-leg out the door” and hundreds of thousands of dollars in overhead and turnover expenses.

The traditional compensation and incentive models will only get you so far and keep someone around for only so long, until the next best thing comes along and competes with your salary bands. You will either have to enter into a bidding war to keep individuals temporarily motivated, identify and develop new talent in this crazy labor market, or become a revolving door that decimates your team’s morale and bottom line. Ultimately, when conducting exit interviews and asking individuals why they chose to leave instead of staying with an improved salary offer, 99% of their responses are “in the end, it’s not about the money.”

Purpose

Staff members current or new want to know there is a Vision for the company. Not matter what the size of the business, if you do not have a Vision, a rally cry, or something to excite purpose in your teams then you’ll have difficulty retaining and recruiting. Start with the end in mind and have the top management team and leadership develop consensus on short and medium term goals. It is okay to share this vision with the staff, you will receive varying degrees of enthusiasm, but the purpose is not for everyone to react the same but connect the dots from their functional role to the growth of the company.

Next, you connect the dots for them during the hiring process, your 1:1s, team huddles, and periodic evaluations. DO NOT make your aspirations static and only addressed at the end of the year holiday party. Reinforce the roadmap and roles that each individual has in the company, how each member contributes to his/ her success and the success of the team. When a candidate is being interviewed, let them know the defined role, vision for the company, and what they have control over when it comes to their upward mobility. As an executive team or business owner, this acts as a compass to gauge the engagement level and who in your company will get you to where you want to be.

Development

When developing individuals focus on the strengths, not the deficiencies. However, before going on there needs to be a distinction between developing technical abilities and developing individual’s preferences and mindfulness of their actions.

Each member of the company has a functional role that requires technical abilities. Technical abilities can be trained and developed by a number of sources. It is crucial for the company to understand how each team member sends and receives information in order to be effective and efficient with trainings. By understanding the individual’s behavioral preference and learning style, management can provide effective trainings for staff that will lead to higher engagement and cost savings.

Developing individual behavior is another discipline that should not be overlooked. When developing individuals to be the leaders and future leaders in the organization, that is where you need to focus on their strengths to get the best out of people.

A company can either go to labor market and attempt to discover potential talent or develop from within. This is where targeted mentorship and coaching is vital for growing talent from within. DO NOT fall for the common pitfall, where a company promotes based on seniority or technical ability. There is a gap between having the technical ability to perform a role and managing others to perform the role. Through mentorship and coaching around awareness of individual’s actions and management of people’s behavior, your company can begin to scale and reduce unwanted turnover.

Communication

How we speak, act, and communicate to staff is critical to the success of projects and retention. We are flooded with new communication apps and project management tools, but we must be selective on when and how we communicate direction, corrective behavior, or just idle chatter. There needs to be a balance in communication tools and frequency. If you are calling staff outside normal working hours or unpredictable times with no agenda, you are causing unnecessary stress due to the want for instant gratification. You ask a question, you get a response, but what you don’t see is the impact it has on the workflow and without context can cause larger issues with further follow up questions.

All team members want to have predictability in communication they will receive, the form it will take, and clear understanding of what is being asked. This is not saying you have to be a robot in communication, but when you are managing people and a steward of their livelihoods you must always be on guard as to how you speak, the way you ask, and what information is being shared.

Does this person need to know this information? Will this improve the quality of their work and life? Is the answer to my question mission critical or can it wait for a designated period in which the context can fully be discussed and understood?

Flexibility

Another benefit and standard that you can promote is the ability for flexibility. This could be creating systems for working remote or blended environments. You can also offer a 4-day work week, where Fridays are flexible if you are needing to get certain tasks accomplished or under strict deadlines. As well as managers taking vacations and promoting self-care.

Yes, that means you as leaders need to step away. Don’t just have HR give a presentation about work-life balance and say more people need to take days off. You as a leader need to be an example that there is time to work but like all people you can disconnect and enjoy life that is not work related. If you are trying to promote future leaders, then those individuals will look to their current leadership structure and ask, “do I want to be like them?”

In addition to flexibility in the environment, promote the flexibility in taking personal care and family appointments. If an individual needs to take a child to a doctor’s appointment, be flexible in the workday. You do not have to have them fill out cumbersome PTO requests for an hour or two to run to an appointment. If you trust in the individual’s work ethic and they have shown they put in hours, they will find time to make up those hours or arrange their workflow to fit. As leaders, develop an understanding that staff and you have a life beyond business. When your teams are together foster the passion around the business vision and individual purpose but be empathetic that life is much more than an outdated concept of “9 to 5” or work identity is the highest form of self-worth.

Compensation

The final standard I would like to address, when it comes to recruiting and retaining the best talent, is compensation and incentive. Yes, the title of this blog is It’s Not All About The Money. This does not mean you can get away with paying people low wages, but you will need to be competitive and mindful of current market conditions. You also need to create an incentive plan that aligns to the individual’s motivators and gives them control of the outcome. Too many times I see businesses creating incentive plans around growth and revenue, when majority of staff have no control over that function. In order to achieve excellent and sustainable profits, you must breakdown the building blocks of revenue and expenses.

Who on my team controls revenue? Who on my team controls expenses? And who on my team is monitoring profitability?

Once you identify who can impact which part of the balance sheet, then you motivate that individual with incentives that correlate to their actions and the impact on the bottom line. Again, it is your role as a leader to connect the dots. You must create the standard and systems that allow individuals to connect their role to the success of the company and that all can benefit both in work and outside of work.

Thank you for your time in reading. If you have any suggested actions, you wish to share, or want to start a dialogue around solutions that can be incorporated in your business or teams, please reach out. We are all in this together!