This employee retention speaker and employee retention trainer sees one major problem with managers and senior level leaders in organizations. They forget where they came from. They forget what it was like to be in that first job. They forget what it was like to be a pee on! If they would do that, many of the employee retention issues that organizations face would disappear. For some reason, senior leaders in particular, forget what it was like to be wait staff, to be a customer service rep or to run a machine and produce parts.
Leaders forget what it was like to be at the bottom of the hill and have the shit flow down onto them. If they would remember how it felt to have certain things happen to them, they would be far more respected and would not anger people to the point that they decide to go home and go on the internet and start looking for another job.
Here are some of the things that this employee retention author has found that leaders need to remember about being at the bottom:
- What it was like to show up and find your entire work area has been rearranged without consulting you.
- When you are told 10 minutes before the end of the Friday shift that you are working on a Saturday and that you won’t be able to see your kid’s baseball game on Saturday.
- What it was like to pass by the president of the company in the hall and not a word of acknowledgement is even said so that you felt like you were invisible or so insignificant that you did not matter.
- How great it felt when the boss asked you what you thought about the proposed change on a policy.
- How you wondered about what the sales numbers looked like for the upcoming month not because you wanted to “hit the number” but because you were worried about having enough work so you would not be laid off.
If senior leaders and managers would remember what it was like to be the low-level person and all the poop that flowed down hill on them or the uncertainty of not knowing what was going on and then that leader behaved accordingly, their people would have far more respect for them. It doesn’t take much to build a phenomenal amount of respect. If you pay attention to your roots and remember what it was like, you as a leader would be a lot better off, the organization would be a lot better off and we would see employee turnover improve.
