Getting & Keeping Talent: Your Secret Sauce
In the book Payoff, Dan Ariely writes, “People dramatically under appreciate the extent and depth to which a feeling of accomplishment influences people.” He goes on to state, “The more a company can offer employees opportunities for meaning and connection, the harder those employees are likely to work, and the more enduring their loyalty is likely to be.”
Adding meaning and connection to your employee’s lives sounds good, but how do you do it? You can’t order either connection or meaning on Amazon. Instead, you use the resources of your business to identify challenges, imagine solutions, and rally others to help make a difference. Over time develop “your secret sauce” to engage and retain employees and distinguish your firm in the market.
Secret Sauces that Add Meaning and Connection
These examples vary in labor intensity and creativity. All involve working with others.
- Some of your employee qualify seek a Habitat for Humanity home. Over time, your nonprofit positively impacts and improves the communities housing stock.
- Your employee’s break room overlooks a scruffy-looking community playground. You create an employees and business partner workday to refresh it. In a few years, as you upgrade other play areas, this becomes one of your sponsors signature community contribution.
- Your IT firm helps caseworkers to identify and use a software program that allows them to capture case notes on the fly. Your contribution helps caseworkers to spend 20 percent more of their time face-to-face helping foster children. With this success to inspire you, you seek other nonprofits where software will bump up their services and you can earn revenue.
Make Your Own Secret Sauce
To create your secret sauce, leaders must support the effort 100 percent and ensure that the sauce ingredients match your business strategy. Call me (941-924-4860) to discuss how to create your secret sauce that grows loyalty and productivity. Most customers find that they can achieve even without increasing with their current investments.
