As an employee retention speaker and employee retention trainer, one of the areas that are killing our ability to retain talent is the lack of skilled leadership in the first-line supervisory and managerial ranks. We have talked and talked about leadership over the past three decades but I see organizations that are hemorrhaging people hesitate to do any training of their supervisors and managers. These are the people that impact employee retention the most and can make or break you.
This employee recruitment expert has seen the organization’s unwillingness to spend money on leadership training over the past 30 years. It began after the first big recession in the early 1980s. This has left us with a tremendous void in leaders with the skills needed to deal with a more challenging workforce in the millennial generation and Gen Z. We complain how difficult they are to motivate, etc., etc., etc. but has not given the leaders who must lead them the skills required to do so.
The ability of supervisors and managers to properly handle performance issues, motivate, discipline, communicate, listen, show appreciation and the myriad of other things that you learn in basic leadership training is essential to your retention strategies. We have educated leaders who don’t know how to perform these basic functions of leading. The schools don’t teach it so people learn it from the people that they work for. Unfortunately, they haven’t been trained either because we stopped training three generations ago.
Perhaps the crisis of employee retention will wake the people up at the top and get them to invest in their leaders. We are in severe need of basic leadership training for supervisors and middle-level management if we want to deal with the challenges of difficulty to lead younger generations of employees. It’s time to stop delaying and plug the gap!
Remember…Give Your Employees C.R.A.P.® (Caring, Respect, Appreciation, and Praise) Why? Because C.R.A.P. Works!
Are you concerned with the level of employee turnover in your organization? If so, call me at 414-421-9626 or email me at jeff@humanassetmgt.com to find out how my proprietary process can reduce employee turnover by 40-80%.
