At every turn there is a new study, headline story or data coming out about burnout, workplace stress, decreased engagement at work, and churn/turnover rates.
It’s a lot to navigate and it’s so easy to get wrapped up in the uncertainty of it all.
This week the Fed raised interest rates (again), the market is on a roller coaster and conversations on a potential recession spiked. Continued rising costs puts pressure on our everyday budgets, which increases salary pressure on companies.
And let’s face it, small and medium size businesses feel this pain the most deeply.
Turmoil in the workplace continues to mirror the economic uncertainty. Trends that started before the pandemic, spiked and got magnified throughout the pandemic and are still real issues. Exhaustion, employee commitment, company wide disengagement, pulling back the ‘frills’ and creating more boundaries around work hours while, out of necessity, adding extra responsibilities.
Interestingly, while compensation is certainly a factor for increasing job changes and disengagement, according to Gallup’s poll, people surveyed shared these leading reasons why they were more disengaged at work:
A lack of opportunities to do what they are best at
A lack of clarity and clear expectations
A lack of opportunities to learn and grow
And wanting to feel more connection
Further, from the ADP Research Institute’s most recent 50,000-person survey the most powerful predictors of retention, performance, engagement, resilience, and inclusion did not include pay or liking one’s colleagues or work location or even a strong belief in the mission of the organization.
The 3 most significant factors were: Was I excited to work every day last week? Did I have a chance to use my strengths every day? Did I get a chance to do what I’m good at and something I love?
When you sift through all of this the big picture feels a bit daunting. But I see so much positive action coming from all this.
First of all, when you look at this list of reasons, there is so much we as leaders can do right away. Plus, as my conversations with business leaders have shown over and over, there is a re-invigorated discussion between leaders and their teams around engagement and navigating changes together.
Get the right people in the right roles!
At our core, leaders truly want to develop a cohesive, values driven team. We want our people’s strengths aligned with their work. We want to create a great place to work with a loyal team.
A sure way to address many of the issues employees are citing is to take a real look at role alignment. We often overlook problems with alignment (duplication of effort, missed responsibilities, finger pointing, miscommunication, etc.), because we’re so busy reacting to the day-to-day work.
But being proactive, identifying your team's strengths, getting clear on role expectations and then fostering and matching those strengths results in clearer expectations; growth and development opportunities that serve both the company and your team.
Steps to Create Alignment: a win-win for the company and the team
Identify the strengths of everybody on the team.
Optimize your teams by strategically combining all those strengths.
Go employee-by-employee and make sure everybody’s strengths align with their job duties.
Finally, when you’re expanding a team, make sure you incorporate a candidate’s strengths into your selection criteria.
And guess what, through the process you get to have meaningful conversations with your team members, they understand better what’s needed, and they get to see how you are investing in them personally.
The bottom line is people stay in jobs they love, and the key to making that happen in your organization is to: put the right people in the right roles and let them be successful and shine!
What resonated for you? It's always good to hear from you and I respond to every message.
In partnership,
Andrea Infelt Almaraz
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