TWO Buck IT STOPS HERE

Ponder this: Who’s really in charge of engaging and retaining your best people?

This sign was on President Truman’s White House office desk, and Truman popularized the now-familiar phrase. Every culture has its way of saying do not pass the buck. In Chinese it goes like this, , and it translates to “No shirking of responsibility.”

When we ask supervisors and managers how to keep good people, many immediately respond, “With money.” Research suggests that a majority of managers truly believe it’s largely about the money. These managers place the responsibility for keeping key people squarely in the hands of senior management. They blame organizational policies or pay scales for the loss of talent. Or they point the finger at the competition or the location. It’s always someone else’s fault.

Well, the truth is, you matter most. If you are a manager at any level, a front-line supervisor, or a project leader, you actually have more power than anyone else to keep your best employees. Why? Because the factors that drive employee satisfaction, engagement, and commitment are largely within your control. And the factors that satisfy and engage employees are the ones that keep them on your team. Those factors haven’t changed much over the past 25 years. Many researchers who have studied retention agree on what engages or satisfies people and therefore influences them to stay: meaningful and challenging work, a chance to learn and grow, fair and competitive compensation, great coworkers, recognition, respect, and a good boss. Don’t you want those things?

Alas

There’s nothing I can do about our brain drain. The competition is offering more money and better perks. We don’t stand a chance.

—Manager, retail pharmacy

You do stand a chance. Your relationship with employees is key to their satisfaction and decisions to stay or leave. Consider this:

• Research by the Gallup Organization found that at least 75 percent of the reasons for voluntary turnover can be influenced by managers.

• Watson Wyatt reported that the relationship with the supervisor/manager was the top-ranked reason employers gave for why employees leave an organization, cited by 31 percent of respondents.

• A Conference Board consolidation of 12 major studies on employee engagement found that all studies agreed that the relationship with one’s manager was the strongest drive of all.

• A Center for Creative Leadership/Booz Allen Hamilton study found that among those who strongly agreed that they work for a manager who cares about their well-being, 94 percent said they intend to stay with their current employer. Of those who strongly disagreed that their manager cared about their well-being, just 43 percent planned to stick around.

• Research by the authors (over 18,000 respondents) found that most retention factors are within managers’ influence.

The evidence is clear. The buck stops with the manager. That reality is taking hold in organizations across the globe. Managers who think engagement and retention are somebody else’s job need to think again.

In our exit interviews, for those who are honest, the major reason people leave is conflict with their manager. That needs to be dealt with, and those relationships need to be strengthened. Most managers do not see creating a retention culture as their responsibility. They do need to own this responsibility and be held accountable to create and maintain this culture.

—CEO, nonprofit firm in Singapore