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Matthew Kelly on the Costs of and Cures for Turnover
Author and consultant Matthew Kelly has penned a wonderful essay about the real causes and cures of employee turnover in The Turnover Dilemma: Keeping Employees by Fulfilling Dreams.
Kelly declares that most business consultants have it wrong when they cite the “usual-suspect” causes of employee turnover:
1. The employee’s relationship with his/her manager is dysfunctional.
2.The employee does not feel appreciated and valued.
3.The employee does not feel that his/her talents are being utilized. i.e. they feel like they have more to offer.
4. The employee has no way to measure his/her success or progress.
“What most consultants will not tell you is that while these are all valid reasons, they are secondary to what is at the core of the turnover issue. The #1 reason people leave a job is not because they have a dysfunctional relationship with their manager or because they don’t feel appreciated. They leave because they cannot see the connection between the work they are doing today and the future they imagine for themselves.”
To create truly engaged employees, Kelly goes on to advise leaders to build strong connections between an employee’s job and their personal vision - their dream for their future.
In any sector, people matter. Good people can make or break any enterprise, yet many managers treat their employees as if they were interchangeable parts of some greater machine. As Kelley points out in his essay, turnover costs can eat a large percentage of a business’s profits.
Though Kelly doesn’t call out the non profit sector in particular, non profit’s people strategies are critical components in both mission-delivery and in overall sustainability. The people who choose non profits are a different breed. Their dream is usually bigger than themselves. They are often connected to a nobility of purpose and greater sense of cause that many private sector workers find baffling and naive.
In fact, if America’s non profit sector is indebted to anyone for its robustness, it owes those two generations of people who, over their working lives, made significant financial and personal sacrifices in service of building a better, healthier society.
Non profit pay has never begun to compare with equivalent positions in the private sector, but if one works for more than money, the rewards are rich, indeed. Playing a part, albeit small, in building healthier and more animated communities is no small accomplishment. It is no small dream.
One can only derive so much satisfaction from stuff, no matter how rare or luxurious. A $5,000 fountain pen won’t transform a writer into Maya Angelou. Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence with a feather quill, not with a Mont Blanc. The lasting power of those words persuades through their meaning, not their ink-delivery system. Dreaming, working, and making meaning may not thicken a wallet, but it enraptures the spirit. Kelly drives that home with this great close:
“Martin Luther King Jr. didn’t stand on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and say to the thronging crowds: “I have a strategic plan….” No, he announced to the world: “I have a dream…”
Non profit managers have it tougher than their private sector counterparts when it comes to recruiting. The candidate pool is smaller because rarer qualities are required of non profit workers, not the least of which is willingness to put oneself and many of one’s material desires behind working toward a greater social good. It’s tougher still when cultural forces and social norms tend to elevate people and value them according to the wealth and power that they have amassed, as opposed to the service they have done their communities and families.
The aim of effective non profit managers when it relates to keeping valuable people boils down to a (slightly amended) lyric from an old song: “Once you have found them, never let them go.”
Posted on September 18, 2007 10:52 AM | Permalink
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Comments
"They leave because they cannot see the connection between the work they are doing today and the future they imagine for themselves.” Such a powerful, profound statement. Thank you!