Getting your retention strategy right

Jeff Livingston: [00:00:00] If we do our job right today, we're hoping that you're going to walk away with a few new ideas about what to implement in the workplace and ways that you're going to be able to move that needle and demonstrate the importance of HR in your organization's strategy and in its daily activity. But before we share what we think is super important around and around retention, let's gauge where you and your team are specifically in the area of retention. So we've got a poll here and to participate in the poll, all you have to do is go to pollev.com/ADPcanada123. And what we're asking for this poll is how is your organization strategy working out so far?

Lisa Medeiros: [00:00:49] I'm excited to see these results, Jeff. 

Jeff Livingston: [00:00:51] I'm just excited that everything's working. Okay. It looks like we've got some results rolling in. Everybody so far is in the midst of developing a retention strategy. 

Lisa Medeiros: [00:01:15] All right. You've come to the right place today, then. 

Jeff Livingston: [00:01:20] Wow. Developed one? Not actioning it. Alright. 

Lisa Medeiros: [00:01:39] Hey, we've got some day ones. This is awesome. 

Jeff Livingston: [00:01:46] We've got some rock stars. All right. Awesome. So. Now that we've got a pretty good Oh, we had a rock star and then we lost the rock star. 

Lisa Medeiros: [00:01:57] There we go. 

Jeff Livingston: [00:01:57] Maybe we'll be able to just bring them up to that level. Lisa, what do you think when you see the figures?

Lisa Medeiros: [00:02:05] Well, I think that this is really common where you're in the midst of developing that retention strategy, also seeing that strategies and plans have been created but not yet executed. So today we're going to help you with with all of these results and even those of you that are rock stars. We're going to give you some new information just to get you that much better.

Jeff Livingston: [00:02:30] So let's dive more into those specific reasons why employees are staying and which priorities employers should be looking at. Now, at ADP, we conduct quarterly workplace insight surveys. And these surveys, they they really provide this timely, these relevant insights on trends in the Canadian workforce. Now, over the past two years, we've been monitoring the impact of the pandemic, and we've been regularly tracking pandemic related trends. And what it does is it's been so successful, it really shows how ADP is this thought leader like what we're doing today. And nine times out of ten, what I get really excited about is that the media come to us asking for answers about what's happening in the workplace. So today I'm going to share some of our most interesting survey findings, specifically around retention and employee engagement. Now, these findings, I'm hoping they're going to give you some cause for pause. I'm hoping that you're going to find them interesting, relevant, and that you and your team, maybe you're going to find some stats that you haven't thought about today and you're going to be able to action it in regards to your retention strategy. Well. So let's take a quick look at some of the surveys that we've done in the last year. A July 2022 survey that we conducted with Maru public opinion. It revealed that 24% of working Canadians took a chance on a new career opportunity in 2022, and that meant that they've started a new role in the last six months. Gallup. Found that we were doing some projects. Gallup found that while 48% of employees they're in the midst, they're actively searching for new opportunities. Another one of our polls show that 88% of those who are looking at changing jobs within the next six months, well, their most important determinant is compensation. So it's really important for employers to be looking at compensation, what they're doing, what their competitors are doing, what's happening in the industry, what's not, what's happening outside of the industry. One thing that was really interesting around that 88% stat was that the second most popular determinant, what people find are important is flexibility. Now last year when we did the same survey, we saw that flexibility. It just became number one. It was the most important determinant when people were looking for a new role. But it looks like maybe because of inflation, maybe because of the way the economy is going, some people are dialing back that how important flexibility. It's no longer the number one priority. The number one priority right now is compensation. Also when we're talking about compensation, one thing was really interesting is that that July 2022 survey, it showed that 27% of people who had who had received a pay raise in the last six months of them, they received a pay raise in the last six months. It showed that their employers were looking at how important was compensation. It looked at that this was some way that maybe workers were workers and employers were dealing with inflation, helping their employees. Of those people that received raises. 37% of those pay raises were above 5%. So when we looked at those figures, we thought, you know what, these probably have to do a lot with inflation because they were trying to certainly not match that eight and 9% rate of inflation. But it looked like they were trying to come as close as possible. And another takeaway with one of our surveys this year, it showed that 50% of those aged 18 to 34 said that they would leave their employer if they found out that a colleague of equal standing but of different gender received higher compensation compared to only 37% for other age cohorts. So it shows that what's super interesting is that we've got the Gen Zers out there and they are really they're really looking at what's important to them and how their values are being aligned with the values of the organization. So these are really super interesting stats and what we're going to look at is we're going to look at how Lisa's clients are addressing those stats. One thing that we base today's presentation on is we developed this great retention guide and the retention guide can be downloaded today at this address. Even if you just Google Retention Guide on Canadian HR Reporters website. We've seen hundreds of people download the guide, but a lot of what we're going to talk about today is from that guide. So don't worry about writing set down because a lot of it is already found inside that guide. 

Lisa Medeiros: [00:07:11] So let's just get things on the right track to to start this presentation with the details. Let's talk about the difference between retention and turnover rates. So retention is measuring how successful your organization is at keeping employees that you want to keep. Turnover is measuring the rate at which people are leaving. Involuntary turnover, that's the organization. Deciding to terminate someone's employment could be layoffs, could be performance issues, but voluntary turnover, this is the one that you want to keep a close eye on. This measures the rate at which employees are choosing to leave. It's not necessarily what you want to have happen, as this typically could be your employees that you value very highly for their skills, their abilities, as well as their engagement with your organization. Having a workforce of experienced high performers is every employer's dream, and employees are essential to the quality of your products, your services and your relationships with your clients. And losing these great employees has a negative consequence and it can be expensive. And we all have heard these statistics before. Direct replacement costs are 50 to 60% of an employee's annual salary, with total associated costs ranging from 90 to 200% of annual salary. There's additional losses, though, that when we lose these great employees and these losses come in the form of lower morale and loss of productivity with the remaining employees, the organization also loses all of the experience in the institutional knowledge that the departing person has. This is often significant when a long time employee is leaving your organization. Client relationships can also be disrupted. They sometimes result in loss of contracts, and this all has an impact on your bottom line. So that makes retention and turnover and knowing what to do about it. An important part of your business strategy. You can't control what everyone does, but you can control how you react to these situations and of course, the information that you're provided. There's three major influences to retention on any organization, no matter your size or the industry that you fall in. There's two what we call external pillars and one internal pillar, and the external pillars are completely out of your control. But as I said, you can control how you react to these influences. Marketplace and economy is one of those external factors and the growth or contraction of the overall economy, as well as economic factors affecting your local job markets. These each have significant impacts on employee retention. When the economy is growing, job growth increases and employment rates decline. Naturally, workers have more opportunities at this point to change their jobs and feel more. Be comfortable with their choices to change and join new organizations in a growing economy. Employees are often hard pressed to find qualified workers to fill openings because they're all leaving and they have all of these other opportunities in front of them. Conversely, when the economy slows and unemployment rates are rising, employees do tend to stay in their jobs longer. Employees are more hesitant to make that change because there's fewer opportunities out there. However, this also does lead to your competitors possibly poaching your employees because they're already skilled, they're already trained, they already have that knowledge, making it easier for them to just plunk them into their own organization. You can't control any of these, but you should have a strategy for this. The other external and uncontrollable influence is the employee themselves. Retention is often influenced by what's happening in the lives and the life stages of these individuals. Take a look at your workforce and the generation bans. Are you heavy on the tenured employees that are maybe looking to slow down and retire in the next few years? Or are you heavy on the young families that have those responsibilities? And these are much different today than they used to be before. What does your succession plan look like for your expert employees? Are you transferring the knowledge regularly? Are you cross training so you're not caught off guard when they depart? Young workers are also more mobile. These employees under the age of 25 have the highest turnover rate. They are willing to take more risks. And as people settle in their careers, the turnover rates are lower, but they're still existent. And a new generation of workers are bringing in new personal priorities into the workplace, into the workplace. They've got child care, they've got elder care. That's a new huge one on the horizon. How can you provide a flexible workforce that improves the work life balance for everyone across the board? The emergence of diversity, equity and inclusion. This has become a major personal priority, especially for younger workers in Canada. Nearly half of employed Canadians aged 18 to 34 that have been surveyed. They say that they would be more loyal to their organization if their company takes a positive public stance on social justice issues such as diversity, equity and inclusion. These feelings can be heavily weighted attributes of an ideal employee as the future of work continues to emerge. So as a result, employers should really be focusing and developing an effective DENI strategy to help attract and retain the talent that they need. Lastly is that internal influence, that's the one you can control your organization. What is what? What's it like to work for your organization? This is a significant factor in whether and how long employees are choosing to stay. There's many factors that can affect the relationships between the organization and its employees, including your culture, your compensation and your benefits, your work relationships with managers and colleagues, and, of course, the work itself. Opportunities for growth and development also make a difference in how employees are building their careers over time. The ADP Research Institutes Evolution of Work 2.0 Report explains that a majority of employees are taking pride in their work and they have a greater loyalty to their companies. And then then really, we're really estimating we have to remember this information and take it into consideration. Change management is a significant part of retention strategy. Consider the impact when there's a change in your leadership. How Internal power struggles could even affect the teams. Also, consider that data. The data shows a significant turnover rate at the beginning and end of fiscal periods. Are people staying long enough just to get that annual bonus? These influences, whether controllable or uncontrollable, they really should be worked into your retention strategies and your retention programs as you build them. Dana doesn't often show danger. Danger? Something's wrong. Do you have the tools to capture it? And are you listening? Data can often warn us of issues before we even notice them. Understanding that data and having a regular schedule for reporting and analyzing this helps organizations see what's actually happening. Tracking data over time can help spot potential problems before they even become bigger problems. For employee retention, it's not enough to just monitor that turnover. It's also where you need to focus on who's leaving. You can't ignore the most obvious, important part of retention, which is who is staying. Tracking data is extremely important, but it's what you do with that data that has more meaning. So, Jeff, in my HR travels as a leader, I've come across this area many, many times and one time in particular stands out to me. And as some of you might know and have experienced or are experiencing, there's a shortage of skilled people in the trades at this organization that I was a part of. We were having a tough time with the mechanic shortage, and on top of that we were having a hard time retaining the ones that we were hiring. We analyzed, we took all of this data and we we parceled it down to discover that although we were developing our apprentices extremely well, they were leaving and they were leaving for opportunities that afforded them lead roles faster than we had planned and faster than we were even allowing. So those who were loyal to the team in the process, those were the people that were staying. Those were the people who wanted to to follow the program as we were laying it out. People who wanted to be trusted sooner and be given those opportunities sooner. Those were the ones that were leaving. So this is when we implemented this rotating goalie program and anyone who was a child in health league hockey, you may understand this thought process. When kids start out in hockey, they rotate the players on the team through that goalie position. This allows coaches to assess the players. Who has the potential to be a goalie who even wants to be a goalie. That's an important part of that process as well. So what we did was we we translated that process and that that program into a program within our organization with our mechanics on our apprentices. So we implemented that strategy and we rotated them through lead roles every four weeks. We were giving each person that ability to act as a leader for a month. They learned the role, they planned, the work, they felt they filed all of the reports that they were accountable for, as well as the decisions that needed to be made. Some people excelled and others not so much. This gave the company a chance to assess these mechanics players as well as who had that management and leadership potential. It also gave each mechanic a chance to see if this role was really what they wanted. For those who decided it wasn't for them, they came to that conclusion fairly quickly. Didn't even get through that four weeks. But not only did this allow them the respect for anyone in the role that they learned the demands of the role. As a result, we not only increased our retention rate, but we also became the place to work as mechanics because of the opportunities that we were offering this group. So your organization's retention data, it really helps you to start tracking and turnover. It's who's leaving, tenure, who's staying. Termination reasons understand why people are leaving absence rates. If these rates are trending, investigate the specifics, the locations, the departments, etc. Your time to promotion. How long it takes for an average worker to advance. Benchmarking is extremely helpful when you're comparing this data against similar organizations, and you can do this with turnover rates as well as the average earnings in the area and in your marketplace. People come and go in organizations and some turnover is expected. It can, however, be difficult to discern what's normal turnover and when there's a problem. A retention strategy should include an analysis of both why people are leaving, but also why people are staying. There are different populations with different concerns, and it's important to know how to keep people who are looking to go and how to do more of what inspires those who want to stay. One of the first steps in creating retention strategy is understanding the organization's retention and turnover rates. Then compare them to other similar employers through that benchmarking that we talked about before. Turnover varies widely by industry through organization as well as geography, the size of the organization and how you're structured, the life stage of employees and of course, the overall economy also play a factor. Understanding these factors and how they apply to your organization gives insight into both what's going well and where there may be some potential problems. The time period you use also matters monthly to turnover rates gives you that snapshot and it shows seasonal variations over the year. Annual turnover rates are cumulative and reflect the total number of separations for that year. Interestingly, though, there is almost no difference in turnover rates based upon gender or marital status. Life stage or age are more significant when a company's overall and voluntary turnover rates are about the same as similar employers. It can mean that your turnover is about right in many organizations of the same size and similar industry benchmarks are just the start of that analysis. Averages can hide problem areas, particularly when you're in a larger group. So to gain that deeper insight into what's happening, calculate the overall and the voluntary turnover rates by location, department type of job. Other logical groups such as maybe even the level of management. If there's a high turnover, either voluntary or involuntary in any specific areas, it's really useful to look at turnover rates by manager or other demographics to see if patterns emerge. I joined an organization a number of years ago as their HR director, and on my very first day, the VP of Operations asked me to make a priority out of finding out why the well of candidates had run dry at this particular division. I pulled all of the statistics that we're talking about here today. I looked at the data and many like the ones we're recommending on these previous slides. The data told me that the turnover was concentrated in one department and that department had a manager, a supervisor and a team of 18 people. The data showed that in a year and a half they turned over that team five times. That means 90 people had come and gone within that time frame. That is significant. The one thing I did notice, though, that there was three consistent people that had always stayed. And like any HR leader, I wanted to talk to them. So when I did talk to them, they were nervous. I was new. I was an HR leader. They didn't know what to say. They were really scared. I knew at that point I needed to change my approach, so I wanted to sit on it for a couple of days. That weekend I happened to be at a housewarming party. I ran into someone that I hadn't seen in a while. We were catching up, catching up on life, jobs, our kids, and she told me about her son who happened to be living in that same community, that of this location that I was evaluating. And she said that he was looking for work. And I said, Hey, oh my goodness, we're hiring. Tell your son to send me his resume. Well, she laughed. She laughed and she said, Not a chance. No way. That manager is well known for being a tyrant. He manages with fear, and it's known in the community not to even apply there because you won't last. Well, it was like a light bulb had gone off and I was able to go back to those three individuals with a new approach, giving them a voice to actually get meaningful information. And of course, it did confirm what was being said out there in the community. Sadly, I had to take this information to the VP of operations. He had a hard time digesting it because he's always seen this person as a good guy, hit the targets, always well organized. Once you have a better understanding of why people are leaving, why they come and why they stay, you can work toward retention programs and strategies that are now more meaningful to your organization. 

Jeff Livingston: [00:24:09] You know, Lisa, one thing I find really interesting about your story about going out in the community and hearing what people thought about the organization is you and I met earlier at this year's National Payroll Institute conference. We did a presentation on recruiting and we talked a lot about how do you become that employer of choice? And a lot of it is a marketing strategy and a lot of it has to do with what's your brand out there with those potential candidates in the community and what's your reputation? And when you share that story, I think, wow, that's one person who, you know, your marketing team, every single employee does this huge like they put it on their shoulders to build this great reputation. And then you've got one employee who's just ruined it in that community. And not it just doesn't impact what people think about the company, but it also impacts what people think about joining that company or leaving that company. 

Lisa Medeiros: [00:25:09] Absolutely. It really is the adage of one bad apple spoils the bunch, right? Absolutely. So better data, better questions through the foundation to getting your talent strategy right. Turnover rates, tenure and data. These are all essential clues to understanding the patterns and where problems might exist within your organization, but they rarely show what's actually causing the problem. Causation usually requires further investigation, like I did in that story of the drilling down to what was really happening in that department. Exit interviews are a fantastic way of gaining insight into why people are deciding to leave your business. And this is going to contribute to offering a solution to the issue of high turnover. I can't say it enough. These should always be done in person. Always, always, always. Mailing out an exit survey is rarely going to garner you results. People are going to file it in the garbage. It's not really something that they want to fill out. They've pulled away from your organization. They're comfortably in their new role. Do it in person and do it in a manner that is comfortable for the person on the other side. But keep in mind that exit interviews can go one of three ways. You'll most times get the answers to your questions from employees that are exiting and they're unhappy. They feel like they have nothing to lose, and they're going to tell you exactly how they feel and why they're leaving. The other is that you might get the diplomatic employee. This one's going to give you answers, too, but you're going to need to really read between the lines to understand what it is that they want to say, because they don't want to be offensive and they don't want to cause any any issues during their exit. The last one is that employee that really isn't going to tell you much. They're going to tell you that they're leaving because they've been afforded an opportunity that they can't give up. These are the people who don't want to burn bridges. These are the people who want that door to stay open for that opportunity to return if things are not as they seem, where they're going. Creating and implementing an effective exit interview survey can really appear challenging and time consuming. At first. I know it, I've done it, I've been there. But the consistency of doing it is where you're going to get that success and the information that you get from all of this research. It's priceless and it's really going to help you with your retention rates of invaluable employees and ultimately the growth of your business. So unfortunately, in areas when we're talking strategies, only 21% of employees say that they're very engaged and disengaged. Employees costs organizations $450 billion per year in lost productivity. Few things bring down engagement, like failing to give employees a voice. Employees want to influence decisions that affect their work and the direction of the organization and, of course, giving employees a real. So it can dramatically improve your retention. Turning feedback into action demonstrates that leadership takes employees concerns seriously and giving employees a voice. A voice starts with those employee engagement surveys, one similar to what Jeff was referring to earlier at the beginning of this presentation. It's delivered with the aid of modern engagement platforms. Several of them are out there that you can take a look at. These solutions help you ask the right questions to reveal how employees truly feel about their role, their team, and even their manager. Employees who feel appreciated work harder and they stay at companies longer. But over 80% of employees say that they don't feel recognized and rewarded to make consistent recognition recognition a reality. Your organization should really prioritize both social recognition as well as the monetary rewards, preferably by using a recognition platform that helps everyone get into the action. And they make showing recognition easy. Whether these employees are in the office or you've got the remote employees working from home, these this ability gives them they can send those messages of appreciation to anyone within your organization, whenever and wherever the time works for them. The total loss to a business from infecting ineffective training can add up to $13.5 million each year per 1000 employees. Unsurprisingly, there is a direct link between low investment in employee development and staff turnover. On the flip side, supporting professional development and continuous learning uplifts your employees and boosts that retention rate. Think about providing a reimbursement for continuing education and certification programs, as well as industry events and conferences. You can also host internal knowledge share sessions where employees are teaching one another new skills. Give your employees options depending on how they want to grow. And remember, it's possible to encourage development in targeted ways without breaking the bank. Cultivating a strong organizational culture will deepen the existing employees relationships, pave the way for better customer service, and, of course, draw in exceptional talent. Developing a standout culture involves rewarding people who act on your company's values every day. These values should be meaningful to every employee and communicated in a way that everyone can internalize and understand. The relationship between managers and the direct Quartz reports can make an enormous impact on the employee experience. Look at the example I just gave you 90 people coming through that department in a year and a half. Almost half of employees quit their jobs because of a bad manager, and 60% think their managers actually need more training. The best managers act as coaches and they focus on getting the best out of their direct reports. The coaching approach fosters that mutual trust, making it feel like bosses and their direct reports are on the same team. Coaching works because managers take the time to understand each employee's background and they play to their individual strengths. And finally, 76% of employees experience burnout on the job. Burnout can manifest physically, leaving employees with no choice but to leave your organization. The good news is that your organization can nip burnout in the bud, try giving employees more flexible hours, make sure that their responsibilities and expectations are clear, and that they're appropriate. Teach managers to look for signs of burnout and reach out to people who might be struggling, encourage employees to use their vacation time, and help them find hobbies that ignite their curiosity. Arrange fitness challenges, host a webinar on them, on the importance of good sleep, or even have a nutritionist give a talk on healthy eating habits. Finally, and most importantly, talk to your people, Get their feedback. They probably know exactly what is causing burnout in your organization and they probably have ideas on how to combat it as well. 

Jeff Livingston: [00:32:50] Yeah. You know, Lisa, those are some really amazing, great, great, realistic, real life tips that you offer. I always love all of your examples. I think when we looked at some of the stats that we presented earlier and some of those really great examples and tips that you've given, I think one thing that we see, one I know one of our survey stats showed that when we were doing research for this presentation, while so many Canadians found they found themselves new to job, 24% of Canadians found themselves new to the job in the last six months. Our data show that employees who felt appreciated work harder and stay in companies longer. But over a over 80% of employees say that they don't feel recognized or reward. So it's so important to build that culture of recognition and recognizing people once every once in a while. It requires frequent, specific acknowledgement. We saw a study from the Brandon Hall Group that found that companies who recognize their employees multiple times a month are 41% more likely to see improved retention. So I think it just shows how important that recognition is. And I think that's why we've kind of gone from that one concept of the great resignation to now there's something called the great recognition. Something else I think is really important is when we've got so many new employees coming into the workplace from from wherever they came from. It's also really important to show our thanks and our recognition to those who stayed, those who were loyal to it, and also watch those managers who maybe are showing preference to employees who maybe preferenced employees who are in the workplace. So when we're talking about things like the proximity bias, let's make sure that we're showing people are being equal, they're showing equity, they're showing giving the same opportunities to people in the office versus people those who are working remotely. And I think it's also really important to invest in employees careers. So when you're looking at retaining people. There was a study from LinkedIn, and LinkedIn showed that 94% of employees said that they would stay with their company longer if they invested in their career development. So that's just more stats showing, you know what, when you really do invest with your employees and really invest in their careers, reskill them, give them, upskill them for different roles and just really show that there's other places that you can promote them. There's other ways that they can grow their skillset inside the company. They're going to stay that much longer with you. 

Lisa Medeiros: [00:35:20] Yeah, absolutely. Jeff reminds me of the story. Have you heard about the story about the best tree chopper in town? 

Jeff Livingston: [00:35:28] No Lisa, tell me all about it. 

Lisa Medeiros: [00:35:29] All right. Let me tell you real quickly. So this company hired this guy because he was known for being the best tree chopper in town and he wielded his axe like a pro. When they hired him, they explained that the daily quota was 70 trees. Anything above and beyond that, he was going to get a bonus. $50 a tree. Wow. Great motivation. Great incentive. Two big keys to good retention. So what did he do? First day he went out, he chopped down 100 trees. Holy cow. That's 30 over quota. What a great bonus. Second day he came back to work. He still managed 100 trees, but it took them longer this time. And then the third day he only chopped down 96 trees. And the fourth day he only chopped down 88 trees. And his progress kept declining. Well, what he didn't do was stop and sharpen his axe. And the axe is just like the skills that our employees possess. And from time to time we have to sharpen their axe for them. We have to encourage them to sharpen their axe. In today's economy, employees understand that they need to keep their skills sharp, to remain competitive and to move up the ladder. Organizations can tap into their employees desire for this development and provide that structure mentorship programs. Investing in additional education for them, just to name a few. Explore providing those reimbursement programs for continuing education, as well as those industry events and conferences that I talked about earlier. You can also host that information, those information sessions that is key. Online professional education courses also help organizations reskill and upskill their employees. Key. Key to retention. So let's recap what we learned today. And I think that this is going to highlight some of those topics that we focused on, Jeff. It's understanding who's staying and who's leaving and why track and benchmark data to get that clear picture of what's happening. Assess if you can influence the issue and develop a meaningful strategy. So simply put, when developing a retention strategy strategy, it's important to understand why people leave. But more importantly, let's focus on why people stay. 

Jeff Livingston: [00:37:54] Great recap, Lisa. Let's take a quick look at whether you and I did our job today. One more pull. Let's see, everybody grab your phone. Visit pollev.com/ADPcanada123. Let's hear from you. Which insights and retention tactics stood out the most for you today? Upskilling, reskilling, development. 

Lisa Medeiros: [00:38:43] Wow. How consistent. Recognition. Oh, loving this. Proximity. Data. 

[00:38:57] Oh, look at that. 

Jeff Livingston: [00:39:02] It looks like data is just getting bigger and bigger. Like Lisa, you touched on how important it is to benchmark have those tools available to benchmark, always be measuring and then being able to translate that that data into a story to your leadership team. I think I think that is really the best way that we're going to be able to really move that needle for the HR role with the senior leadership team. Wow, this is really coming in. It is. 

Lisa Medeiros: [00:39:28] I am loving it. People recognition, simple. Love this. Flexibility. Look at that elderly care. Younger workforce feedback.

Jeff Livingston: [00:39:47] Fantastic. 

Lisa Medeiros: [00:39:49] It sure is. 

Jeff Livingston: [00:39:51] Well, before we get to our questions, Lisa's, are anything impactful that we haven't covered that you want to chat about today? 

Lisa Medeiros: [00:39:58] I think we've covered it all. So just just to reiterate, the data is important, but it isn't good if you don't do anything meaningful with it. That is the key. Take the data and turn it into meaningful strategy. 

Jeff Livingston: [00:40:16] Awesome. Jeff, do we have any questions that we haven't addressed from the audience? 

Jeff: [00:40:22] We do, in fact. Well, thanks very much, Jeff and Lisa. Some great information there. An insight on retaining top talent in a tight labor market. So, yeah, we were I think we were able to answer a couple of questions during the presentation, which is great. We do have a question for Lisa, someone just referring to the example that you shared. Speaking generally, as far as the supervisor who is known as the tyrant, what can you talk a little bit about what happened to that individual and what the company's strategy was and in dealing with it? And did it work?

Lisa Medeiros: [00:40:53] Yeah, absolutely. Great question. So those are tough, tough discussions to have and saying the immediate result should be termination. That's not always the right decision because you can't help somebody fix something without letting them know it's broken. So our approach was to actually provide the data to him. We also provided with him the information that was out in the community. We sent him to additional management training. We sent him to training That was significant from a leadership standpoint, helping him to understand that not only are you managing your job, but you're leading people. Those are two completely different factors of being the head of a department. That leader eventually got better and it was great he didn't stay in that department and not because we didn't want him to, because he eventually excelled and he moved up the ladder. So he really took what we were telling him into account for his own success. And that's the key. You have to allow them and afford them that chance to correct, reframe and get better.

Jeff: [00:42:13] It's interesting that I know it's that kind of situation when it comes up. It can be very difficult to deal with, but it's nice to know that when handled, it can come out in a positive light so a good solution can be reached. So that's great. Also, we have someone asking our companies using stay interviews and engagement surveys. And in your opinion, how reliable are these tools if they're being used? 

Lisa Medeiros: [00:42:40] Yeah, absolutely. Jeff, do you want to start with this one? 

Jeff Livingston: [00:42:43] You know what? I love the concept. I love when we talk about stay interviews, because my answer is. What about entrance interviews? Because we know at the we know in an exit interview it's too late. I love talking about entrance interviews because as soon as somebody comes on board, as soon as they're starting, it's great questions to ask of okay what are those extra curricular responsibilities that you have? Do you have to like, for example, for me, I drop our daughter off in the morning at the bus stop and I love picking her up in the afternoon. So when I'm working from home, that's really important to me. I block off that time. Some people they have to take, maybe they go to physio appointments themselves, maybe they take their parents to physio physical appointments or medical appointments. Maybe they have people have certain loves outside of the workplace that you could help fuel that passion. So I think when a manager takes the time to sit down with their new employee and say, Hey, what have you got going outside of the workplace that we can help improve, We can help improve your skill set, we can help change our schedule and be flexible. So you know, you're bringing your really true, authentic self to work and you're living that better balanced. Hybrid flexible work workplace, let's say work style. 

Lisa Medeiros: [00:44:06] Yeah. And the stay interviews, those are your engagement surveys. Absolutely. Figure out what the cadence of those surveys are for your organization and how you're going to get meaningful data from people who are staying. Those engagement surveys are just as important. Absolutely. 

Jeff Livingston: [00:44:23] One thing that we do at ADP that every employee, 50,000 plus employees across the globe do every week. We have a check in. We have an online platform that every employee participates in. It's called Stand Out. And that check in platform asks five questions and it's, Hey, were you able to work with your strengths this week? Hey, what did you not like doing? What are you working on this week? What are you working on next week? What do you need help from your manager for next week? And what that does is it also documents what's going on. So it's part of our performance management system. It's really about our talent management system. And and it's great because sometimes when you're sitting in front of your manager, you don't want to waste time talking about, you know what? I really hate the way that we're doing expenses or I really hate the photocopier and the way I have to, like, swipe it. You don't want to waste time talking about those sometimes silly things, but you'll document these things really bug me in that weekly check in. And what's great is that for me, my manager sees that weekly check in and my manager's manager sees that weekly check in. So there's a lot of transparency to what I love doing in my job and to what I loathe doing in my job. Great. 

Jeff: [00:45:44] All right. Well, that looks like that's it for for the questions that we've had come in today. So great engagement from everyone who joined us today on the polls and in the questions. So we are just about up against the end of our time today for this webinar. So we will wrap things up. Jeff Livingston and Lisa Medeiros of ADP, thank you very much for sharing your time and insight for a very informative and useful presentation. And thanks to everyone else out there who joined us today. That's it. So have a great rest of the day. Thanks, everybody. 

Jeff Livingston: [00:46:14] Thanks, Lisa. Thanks, Jeff.

Lisa Medeiros: [00:46:16] Thank you. Have a great day, everyone.