Have You Noticed What Is Happening?
Have you Noticed What is Happening?
For the last several months I haver been receiving phone calls and emails asking me how dealers should be navigating this current workforce problem. Have you noticed? Let me give you some facts to consider. As of this writing there were 10,934,000 job openings in the USA. That is the highest number ever. Unemployment stands at 5.2%. The long term unemployed (more than 26 weeks) stands at 3,200,000. Surveys tell us that 5,700,000 people who are unemployed want a job. The average work week stands at 34.7 hours and the private non-farm average hourly pay is at $30.72.
Those are the facts. Are you looking for an individual to fill an opening you have in your business? Well perhaps this might give you pause. Gallup research from earlier this year, 2021, found that 48% of the American Workforce was actively looking to change jobs. What do you think is motivating people to want to change jobs? That same survey found that the real problem is employee disengagement. Patrick Lencioni in his book “The Three Signs of a Miserable Job” called it Irrelevance. The employees don’t feel that they are relevant to their employer.
Some of you will use this as ammunition to get everyone back to work in the office. That working from home caused this problem. Don’t come to that conclusion too quickly. It is not correct. Some jobs are more effectively done away from the traditional workplace. Yes, it will take some time to work this out. But make no mistake it is happening now.
Let’s return to Gallup for the reasons for this feeling of “disengagement.” The three most common reasons were:
- Not seeing opportunities for development
- Not feeling connected to the company’s purpose
- Not having strong relationships at work
This is causing a major change in the role of management. Jon Clifton, Global Managing Partner at Gallup notes that even though 64% of the survey respondents didn’t feel engaged at work, that the proportion of engaged workers is growing over time. “One reason is that management strategies are changing. Companies are no longer promoting people to management roles because they are good at their job. Rather, they’re looking at management as a skill in and of itself, and making sure people are good at managing others before giving them more direct reports. Good managers mean more engaged employees and less turnover.” And to me here is the kicker. Employees that are engaged at work are far less likely to leave. Gallup found they’d need to be offered a 20% pay increase to even consider leaving.
I hope you, like I, consider this to be rather sobering news. This news should also force you to do some serious thinking about how you operate. How you engage your employees. Of course, this is nothing new, is it? You should always have been engaging your employees in the business. Who doesn’t know that? But please think about it. How do you engage your employees in your business?
- Do you have perfunctory state of the company meetings once a quarter where the “Management” tours the stores and shares results with everybody? How is that going for you? Perhaps the Pandemic stopped that mode of communications. No, that is not engagement. That is public relations. What about the day- to-day interaction between the employee and their team leader, their direct supervisor? What do they talk about? What is your employee turnover rate? What do the employees who are leaving, tell you in exit interviews? Do you even do exit interviews? If you don’t do exit interviews you should ask yourself why you don’t.
- Do you have annual performance reviews with each employee at least once a year? Sonya Law, one of our talented bloggers, has been writing about this for some time. We did Part #1 of a Podcast a couple of weeks ago and Part #2 will be coming shortly. Not very many businesses provide these performance reviews. They are missing a huge opportunity. Continuous improvement opportunities. Don’t forget that the person doing the job knows more about that job than anyone else. They can tell you ways that things can be made better. For them and for the company. This also give the supervisor the opportunity to explore what it is that the employee would like to do next, what they would like to learn. This is another way that employee engagement can be improved.
- Do you offer, and pay for, any learning that the employee does? Amazon just announced that they will pay for all University education for their employees. Do you do that? Do you offer training programs for all employees? What we at Learning Without Scars advocate, and strongly so, is that each employee should take a Job Function Skills Assessment each year. This should be one of the foundation blocks for the annual review. This is also the gateway to discussions on classes and learning that the employee wants or needs.
Those are three simple questions that need to be answered if you are seriously wanting to protect your business by having your employees truly feel and believe that they are engaged. The choice is yours. This time, however, the consequence for no action is serious.
The time is now.