A couple of recent articles in Human Resources Executive Online touched on the importance of employee loyalty and retention.

In “Managing Turnover’s Disruptions,” Tom Starner emphasized the costs associated with turnover and how to minimize them. Interestingly, the referenced research found that the negative impact of employee turnover on customer service could by mitigated through smaller work teams who were able to more quickly introduce new workers to the company’s culture.

Why is this true? Smaller work groups tend to foster more horizontal loyalty between team members to reduce turnover, while indoctrination into company culture aligns the employee more quickly with objectives and values.

And this alignment is critical to ensuring you are doing “The Right Kind of Retention,” a second article form HRE Online. As the author, Kenneth W. Thomas, points out, not all retention is equal. Do you really want to retain those employees who are staying because they have no other options but don’t really care about their work, your customers or your company?

Kenneth also introduces the key intrinsic rewards for employee, including sense of meaningfulness, choice, competence and progress. These align with Dan Pink’s intrinsic rewards categories of autonomy, mastery and purpose. This is where strategic recognition feeds these intrinsic motivators by communicating the meaningfulness of employee efforts, celebrating achievements of high levels of work and acknowledging progress.

What are you doing to alleviate the effects of employee turnover (voluntary or involuntary), to bring people into your culture more quickly, and then reinforce their intrinsic motivators?

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