Confidence of Competence leads to employee retention

In my book Retention: Key Mindsets That Retain Top Talent, I talk about what I call the confidence of competence. The idea is this, when a person is good at something, say their job, they develop a confidence about their work, and they enjoy it more. Their competence breeds confidence. 
One of the best things you can do for your employees is make them competent through training. A trained employee is competent; a competent employee is confident; a confident employee is engaged; an engaged employee is productive; a productive employee enjoys success; and a successful employee is more likely to stay with your company. 

Inside this chain reaction of good it isn’t difficult to see the benefit training has to the organization. Zig Ziglar has a well-known quote that I have repeated from the speaker’s platform more times than I can count. “You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help enough other people get what they want.” By giving your employees the development and training they want, in return you get an experienced and knowledgeable workforce that is able to keep the promises you make to your customers and clients. This is huge! 

Training, Documentation, and Experience

So back to my client with the high turnover rate.  With the help of the HR administrator and supervisors, we have set out to create a 2-week training program for every position in the plant. Each supervisor has been assigned the task of writing down all that is required for a person to do each job in their department, backed up with written standard operating procedures (SOPs). When completed, every hour of every day, for the first 2 weeks of a new employee’s employment, will be accounted for with training, along with all who will be in charge of that training. 

In addition, plans are in place to produce quality training videos for every machine operation in the plant. When completed, these videos will be viewed by a new employee, accompanied with an online test to ensure the employee learned the procedures. Repetition is the key to learning, so as the new employee watches the videos, coupled with the hands-on training of an experienced operator, the employee will achieve competence. No longer will an employee answer no, when asked if they understand their job. 

If your company lacks a robust training program, I hope you are getting inspired! Now, regardless of how developed your training process is within your organization, let me pass on a couple suggestions to be mindful of. 

A Teacher’s Heart

Assign a specific person, or persons, to be in charge of training your new employees. In no way leave who will train them to chance. The last thing you want is for a new employee to feel like they are in the way, asking questions like what do you want me to do now? New employees are constantly evaluating their experience working for you, from the interview process, all the way up to 90 days and beyond. Surveys show the first 30 days are critical in determining if they keep working for you long term, so a great training experience is vital.  

If at all possible, choose trainers who have a teacher’s heart. The person with the most knowledge is not necessarily the best choice if they lack the empathy and patience to teach. You can recognize the teachers among you without too much difficulty, but having your employees take personality assessments, like DISC, can really help the process. As a certified DISC trainer, I am very familiar with the 4 personality types within DISC. Each type communicates and receives information differently and each can make for a great teacher. Knowing who is what type can take your training to the next level. For instance, if you have an outgoing/people-oriented person, they are sure to make the training engaging and fun because they love to influence and inspire others. All of this can make a great impression on the new employee! 

You might be saying to yourself, this all sounds great, but we don’t have time to create a repeatable training program; it is all we can do to get today’s work done. I get it! I have experienced the same in my business when I want my team to create new processes. And that is where I come in. What I do for businesses is provide the spark and the energy to help them implement their wish-list initiatives.  

Recently I did compensation research for a Central Florida client.   Their challenge is to find and attract employees who can help process their ever-increasing orders.  Business is good!  There are several places an HR professional like myself or business owner can go to research the average pay in a given area.  (Examples: Payscale.com, Glassdoor, Zip Recruiter, Salary.com)  What I found is that pay has drastically changed from just 6 months ago.   Because pay rates are changing so fast, even the research sites I typically use aren’t up to speed with the current rate of pay.  More specifically, they were $2 to $5 less  than what businesses were advertising for entry level hourly positions.  

Why is entry-level pay increasing and so fast?  Well, Universal Studios announced that entry level positions will start at $15 an hour beginning June 27, 2021.  Amazon commercials state that none of their employees make less than $15 an hour.  What this means is that large employers like Amazon and Walmart are helping to set the wage rate for everyone else, including small and medium sized family owned businesses.

But another force is at work.  Simply put, there is a greater demand for workers than supply.  We all  know that COVID has hurt businesses everywhere. Perhaps it is the  extra $300 the Federal Government has tacked onto the state unemployment or perhaps it is the stimulus money that incentivizes people to stay home rather than work a job.  Whatever the reason, we have all seen the many help wanted signs.  

So after sharing the results of my findings with my client, they knew an upward adjustment was in order.  This is easier said than done because it means that everyone’s pay will need to increase.  But the bottom line is the market dictates what we need to pay, even if that market is being influenced by non-market forces.  

If you are having trouble getting employees through the door, even to interview, you too might be surprised to find your pay is low.  Therefore, do thorough research to know if you are truly competitive.   And be ready to do this more often than you would typically do until things settle down and we get past all the stimulus.  Once you have determined your competitive pay rate, I recommend you post the amount of pay with the job ad.  Just like a dating app, where someone is less likely to respond to a potential match because they did not provide a picture, potential job applicants are less likely to respond to a job ad when they don’t know the pay.    

So, what do you look for in these employees whom you depend on to make your business a success?  After determining that they meet the needed experience, skill and aptitude requirements to do the job, the smartest companies pay strong attention to the personality traits of the applicants.  It is these traits that identify those who are most likely to have future success.   

Here are some traits to look for in future employees

• Dependable:  Employees you can count on to show up on time, be prepared, and get the job done.
• Passionate:  They are by nature engaged and productive.   
• Amiable:  A positive influence within the organization, bringing people together. 
• Honest:  Can be trusted with what matters most to the organization.   
• Team player:  The best ideas are usually the result of people working together.
• Confident:  Confident people are natural leaders which every company needs.
• Humble:  They would rather let their actions do the talking than their words.
• Ambitious:  Naturally seek and fill leadership positions within organizations. 
• Integrity:  Sometimes it takes just one person to speak up to prevent the whole company from doing the wrong thing.
• Communication skills:  Good communicators get business done efficiently and with fewer mistakes. 
• Initiative:  Employees with initiative don’t have to be told what to do next. 
• Organized:  Organized employees finish projects on time and within budget. 
• Flexible:  Flexible employees understand that events don’t always happen as planned and are able to adjust.   
• Enthusiastic:  Enthusiasm keeps the positive energy flowing which keeps teams engaged and productive.  

These personality traits will not be revealed in their resume, so questions need to be asked in the interview to draw out the traits you think most important. Let’s say you want someone with initiative.  You could ask the following:  Would you describe yourself as a person who takes initiative? What does taking initiative look like to you?  Can you name a time when you took the initiative? Were you comfortable taking initiative? 

More to the point, by asking Behavioral and Situational questions you can identify important personality traits and competencies that are required to be effective in any given position.  With Behavioral questions you ask the candidate to provide specific examples of when he or she has demonstrated certain behaviors or skills as a means of predicting future behavior and performance.  With Situational questions you ask the candidate to provide specific examples of how the candidate would respond given the situation described.

Here are some examples of Behavioral and Situational Questions

• What was one of the toughest problems you ever solved? What process did you go through to solve it?
• Give me an example of a time you were able to take the lead in changing a policy for your department and for the organization?
• Have you ever faced a significant ethical problem at work? How did you handle it?
• Describe a time when you made a mistake at work. How did you deal with this situation, and what was the outcome? 
• A new policy is to be implemented organization wide. You do not agree with this new policy. How do you discuss this policy with your staff?

I’ve conducted countless interviews in my 20 plus years in Human Resources and I got better at it along the way.  When you consider the high cost of turnover, typically 6 to 9 months of an open position’s salary, it is not enough to hire a warm body to fill the position.  Ask the right questions and listen attentively to their answers to identify candidates with the right stuff.