The 5 Types of Workers Hurting Your Employee Retention
Employee retention is one of the biggest and most expensive problems that companies have. If you have an employee leave before you are ready for them to leave, you know the cost of replacing that person is going to be expensive. Employee retention for some roles can be higher than 50 percent in a 12 month period. My special guest today is Amanda Hammett. Amanda is my wife, and she is amazingly smart in understanding the future of work. Amanda is the host of Next Generation Rockstars podcast, where she talks with millennials and their leaders to see what is working to create rockstars in today’s ever-changing workforce. In this special episode, we look at employee retention in a fun way. We analyze the five types of workers that are hurting your bottom line. Amanda and I share specific types of people that will cause a turnover. We talk about why employee retention matters.
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Amanda & Gene Hammett: The Transcript
Disclaimer: This transcript was created using YouTube’s translator tool and that may mean that some of the words, grammar, and typos come from a misinterpretation of the video.
[00:00:00].160] – Amanda
You know I have plenty of stories about this. You know whether it’s my own personal work history or dealing with companies that I’ve worked with but one you know stands out in my mind. And this person wandered around, drank coffee, checked Facebook regularly. I mean constantly was updating Facebook or social media and it was just it was fascinating because everybody knew who this person was and loved it when they stopped by and chatted for a minute. But at the end of the day what did this person actually accomplish. I’m still baffled by that.
[00:00:35].280] – Gene
Welcome to Growth Think Tank. This is the one and only place where you will get insight from the founders and the CEOs. The fastest growing privately held companies. I am the host. My name is Gene Hammett. I hope leaders and their teams navigate the defining moments of their growth. Are you ready to grow?
[00:00:52].260] – Gene
Creating employee experience really is up to you as the leader or manager of these hearts and souls of your organization. I’ve come here with my special guest my wife Amanda. Amanda is an expert in the future of work and she really works with the next generation of leaders that are coming in. You will listen to her podcast next generation rockstars.
[00:01:15].270] – Amanda
All right. So next generation rock stars is where we bring and some of the top high performing millennials to talk about what keeps them there. And then the second season was all about leaders and how are they looking at leadership differently how are they looking at this next generation differently so that they can actually recruit and retain them.
[00:01:34].950] – Gene
In this special episode we’re going to talk about the five types of workers that are hurting your employee retention employee retention is such an important conversation today that really I don’t think it’s talked about enough.
[00:01:48].170] – Amanda
No it is not talked about or there’s not enough focus on doing it right.
[00:01:52].750] – Gene
And you’ve got a special framework you created that goes through the five stages or five leverage points of this you call this collision course.
[00:02:01].480] – Amanda
Absolutely.
[00:02:02].200] – Gene
What is that?
[00:02:02].310] – Amanda
So the collision course looks at the various points throughout the entire employee lifecycle so from the very first touch that you have in the recruiting process all the way until the last time that an employee walks out the door. Where are the points in which employees and their company are clashing. Where are you actually losing them and where are they coming out of your system.
[00:02:25].060] – Gene
You may be curious about that. We’re not gonna be talking about the collision course today because this is going to be a little bit more of a fun lighthearted episode where we talk about the five types of employees that are hurting your employee retention. But if you want to understand that collision course then we’ve got a training that we have partner with velocity global PEO that really has created a great place for you to expand your talented workforce. If you’re looking at international workers. We’re going to really go into some detail here.
[00:02:55].000] – Gene
If you want to make sure that you get the framework that goes along with the training that go to GeneHammett.com/stay that will get you a one page document to give you a stay conversation they’ll allow you to really tune in to what employees are doing day in and day out or week to week and you will be able to connect with one of the things inside that will really change the game for you as a leader because no one’s doing it. Most people are afraid to do it but it is a powerful force. Just go to GeneHammett.com/stay. Now here is the conversation with Amanda and me on the five types of employees that are hurting your employee retention.
[00:03:37].710] – Gene
Employee retention I really love this conversation because it really is one of the biggest things going on in our workforce. What do you think about employee retension?
[00:03:46].580] – Amanda
This is something I hear over and over and over again. Anytime I’m at a conference speaking or if I’m working with employees there are companies they’re always saying how can we keep more of our employees.
[00:03:59].080] – Gene
There is a war for talent. You probably feel it because you want to have the best workers You want to have the most talented. You want them to to be a part of the culture and you want to make sure you’re very intentional about creating a kind of work experience that makes it so that they really love to come to work. But employee retention is something a lot of people kind of like it’s too fluffy right. Because it’s not something that is on the balance sheet or the piano. If you had a number on your financials that said exactly what it’s costing you because of employee retention you’d be surprised and you’d pay a lot more attention to it.
[00:04:38].150] – Amanda
Absolutely. The cost of employee retention is staggering. If CFO knew exactly how much this was costing it would change the way that companies around the world would operate because right now employee retention is broken up into so many different buckets whether it’s training or management or recruiting cost it’s all broken up. So it’s not one specific number but the thing is is that actually according to Gallup they estimate that every single year the cost the American economy over a trillion dollars just in employee turnover.
[00:05:16].640] – Gene
Let me jump in here because that’s a big number like a trillion is really big. But you know let’s talk about it from a sense of what is it costing you right now.
[00:05:26].160] – Amanda
So Sherm which is the Society for Human Resource Management estimates that it actually costs between one and a half and two times that person’s salary in order to replace them. So that is the recruiting cost. That is the more soft cost. So like the manager training time getting that person ramped up but. Let’s be honest a lot of the industries that I work with they have employees that have been there 30-40 years. They are that amount of corporate knowledge that walks out the door. It’s going to take years and years and years to replicate that into a new person. So that to you know two times their salary I think is is. Easily Done.
[00:06:08].040] – Gene
That’s really for knowledge workers like if you had someone that was an hourly employee it’s going to be less but there still is a cost to to employee retention.
[00:06:16].460] – Amanda
Oh absolutely. But even in the hourly space you know there are a lot of situations where you have people that have been there 20, 30, 40 years and so they’re taking with them a lot of that knowledge. So it is an ongoing issue.
[00:06:30].140] – Gene
I had a workshop a few weeks ago that you attended and one of the clients in there talked about. Losing. At twenty five employees in one month. Yeah. And I said you know what do you think that cost you and he goes I know exactly what it cost me because I had to get temporary workers. These are hourly paid. And it cost him a quarter of a million dollars in one month and one month. It is costing you a lot of money not really understanding this employee retention. So that’s the reason why we put together this episode we’ve come together. You know I focus on a different set of clients which you’ve already explained and Amanda has the corporate side of this.
[00:07:09].350] – Gene
But together we’ve seen this. We want to share with you and make this a little bit fun. So we’re going to talk about the five types of workers that are hurting. Your employee retention. So you’re ready?
[00:07:21].000] – Amanda
You’re absolutely yeah. These are some good ones. And we’ve all seen each of these. Play out in our own careers. So the first one is the micro manager. I mean come on we have all seen this time and time again.
[00:07:37].010] – Gene
I’ll be honest I’ve probably been a micromanager from time to time. It’s easy to be a micromanager because if you’re an A player if you’ve done the work before you know exactly what to do and you can actually just tell them and that’s the easiest quickest thing for you to do is to tell them the exact steps.
[00:07:58].850] – Gene
Is that right.
[00:07:59].820] – Amanda
Right. But I think a micromanager there’s there’s more to it. It’s it’s standing over. It’s like constantly like in their face. What are you doing now what are you doing now. And it gets to the point where the employee can’t even do their work because they’re so focused on responding to you or answering to you that they end up having to spend a lot more time and anxiety invested in just calming you and dealing with you.
[00:08:24].230] – Gene
This reminds me of a story of one of my clients who you know before he became an entrepreneur was talking about you know his manager and this this guy was the traditional micromanager. He was hired to do some marketing for the company and the owner of the company knew a little bit about marketing enough to be dangerous as they say. But he would second guess everything that that was suggested as important or the next steps. And he would you know. Talk about the newsletter and the open rates and why did it happen.
[00:08:57].320] – Gene
And I remember one specific details he was like well I didn’t get it and it was back and forth back and forth and he’s like Did you check your spam folder. He goes It’s not in my spam folder. And then all of a. Guess what it was in the spam folder. So you know there’s a lot of different types of managers out there but the micro manager. Probably is one of the worse because you think you’re doing the right thing but usually you’re not.
[00:09:20].540] – Amanda
Yeah absolutely. So you know I do a lot with the younger employees those under 30 early in career and this is something I hear consistently over and over again is this micromanager and how it’s just devastating to your career in a lot of ways. I had a young lady come up to me at a conference recently and she told me about her manager her former manager. She said that he’s basically. Had her sit down at the end of the day not during the actual workday but at the end of the day.
[00:09:54].470] – Amanda
And she had to write out everything that she did that entire day broken down into 15 minute increments. Now keep in mind this young lady was not an hourly employee. She was a salaried employee and he expected this to come to his email box no earlier than six 15. Now the office closed at [6:00] but she was not to work on it during the day. And she had to do this every single day. And if she didn’t I mean there was consequences the following day. And now I don’t think it’s going to shock anybody to tell you that she did not last even a year at this company before she was gone and it all had to do with this micromanager.
[00:10:35].480] – Gene
I want to make sure we connect the dots here because the micromanager you may thinking you know how is that hurting retention. Well you may have heard this before. I think it’s just so appropriate but people don’t leave jobs they leave managers.
[00:10:49].890] – Amanda
Absolutely.
[00:10:51].390] – Gene
And we probably all had bad managers that we reported to that caused us to leave companies. And that is the reason why it’s number one in the list. It is probably one of the most common. And it really is something that we wanted to kind of draw you into this because some of the others are gonna be a little bit more maybe even fun to talk about because you when we came together we had a lot of fun putting all these together and just for you.
[00:11:19].160] – Amanda
All right. So the second one is not a micromanager but a clueless boss. Now I want to talk about this from my own personal experience. I had a boss one time and I’m not going to name names. However. Every single day or every single interaction I had with this person I would just sit back and ask myself How in the world did you become a manager. How are you in charge of leading people and not just one or two. I mean 50 or 60 people and I was flabbergasted daily. You remember those days.
[00:11:56].080] – Gene
I do. They were stressful because you cried a lot. But I I’ve been through this too. I mean mine was a little bit different. I’ve I respected this this manager but the way they showed up had no regard for the company growing and moving forward. It was just a place for them to kind of I was more like a hobby than it was anything else and I say clueless because it really did feel like I’m pushing forward the business harder than the owner of the business was. And it really. Really allowed me to reflect on what kind of boss I wanted to be in this whole thing and I wanted to be the exact opposite.
[00:12:35].780] – Amanda
Absolutely. But I think in that situation I mean she actually had personal shoppers coming in she had no clue literally what was going on in the day to day.
[00:12:45].260] – Gene
She said she did but she was just checked out. Most of it you know it’s hard to get that kind of work done in a couple of hours. It was a small operation. I grew a lot because I was forced to think self which was good for me because I had that drive but it really is just as clueless bosses is. The people that you really have no respect for.
[00:13:07].390] – Amanda
Yeah.
[00:13:07].670] – Gene
Is that fair?
[00:13:08].680] – Amanda
Absolutely. But in my case I mean he was smart in a certain way. But he would ask questions of me and meetings or of anybody and everybody was just staring at him and you could tell that they were like. Kind of an idiot here and I felt really bad but at the same time I eventually just had to start saying hey this is how it is. This is this is the decisions that we need to be making. This is the direction that we need to be taking. And he actually asked me in the exit interview if I had listened to you would would you be leaving. And I said Probably not. At least not now.
[00:13:43].690] – Gene
Well I’m thinking about this right now and we could put this together we we’ve talked about stories that could fit along with it and we we pick two personal stories here because. We thought you could relate to them but also we left both those jobs so we quit. And that really drives into you know you want to make sure you pay attention to this clueless boss character if you will because it will impact your employee retention.
[00:14:12].320] – Amanda
I will actually say that this particular boss situation that I was talking about the turnover there was enormous. I mean it was a constant churn of employees in and out in and out in and out some roles. Obviously a lot more than others but it was like you you almost got to the point where you didn’t want to invest in getting to know somebody new because you knew that they’d be gone within you know six months at the most.
[00:14:44].270] – Gene
Let’s hold up here for a second because we’re talking about these types of workers that are hurting your employee retention if you want to be a better manager and you want to really create the kind of leadership that people admire that you want to have a simple framework that we’ve developed over a few years of working with leaders that will help you increase the employee retention. We call it the stay framework.
[00:15:05].540] – Amanda
Absolutely. And this framework is super easy and it’s super easy to implement and use every single day with your employees because again at the end of the day you want to keep them. So we have boil this down to one page one simple page you can just easily implement. So sign up and get it below.
[00:15:24].590] – Gene
There is one thing in there that we have seen that almost every manager is leaving out. They don’t even know to include it. They’re actually opposed to it but the power of this one little thing that’s inside there that takes about five minutes is really a game changer when it comes to employee retention.
[00:15:42].350] – Amanda
Absolutely. I mentioned it when I spoke at a conference recently and it was just profound to everybody in that audience.
[00:15:50].240] – Gene
So if you want to get that framework go to GeneHammett.com/stay and you will get the stay framework that would give that one page kind of cheat sheet that will give you the tools to be a better manager.
[00:16:02].840] – Amanda
All right. So the third type of employee that is killing your retention is. The low. The loafer is the person we all know that tries to seem like they’re working. But they’re never really getting anything done.
[00:16:19].370] – Amanda
Yeah they are doing the bare minimum in order to survive in order to continue to collect that paycheck. And it’s really frustrating for everybody else because they’re actually having to pick up the slack because you know this person didn’t get things done on time or they’re wandering around the office drinking coffee and talking to people and what are they actually doing what are they actually accomplishing. It’s fascinating.
[00:16:43].640] – Gene
Everyone knows that social butterfly. And they seem to never be really doing the work that they’re supposed to be doing. I don’t know how when a manager sits down with that person that they can actually. You know. Not just find them on the spot.
[00:16:57].920] – Amanda
I think what it is is a lot of times they’re able to hide. They’re able to find themselves into situations with managers who are not having these. Constant conversations about what’s going on. How can we help you.
[00:17:11].980] – Gene
Well this reminds me of a story that I was involved in the company that went through a merger and you bring over two cultures and they combined together and that happens from time to time. And in this case this this founder was talking about you know bringing over a group of people that just didn’t seem to fit and those people were told to to really operate in a different way than what they were used to. And it really taught caused a lot of them to just kind of switch off and so they just collected a paycheck. They showed up day in and day out they were at the meetings they were supposed to be at. Everything looked from the surface like they were doing what they’re supposed to be doing. But we both know the truth. They were just loafing around.
[00:17:57].280] – Amanda
Oh absolutely. I mean you know I have. Plenty of stories about this. You know whether it’s my own personal work history or dealing with companies that I’ve worked with but one stands out in my mind. And this person wandered around drank coffee checked Facebook regularly. I mean constantly was updating Facebook or social media and it was just it was fascinating because everybody knew who this person was and loved it when they stopped by and chatted for a minute. But at the end of the day what did this person actually accomplish. I’m still baffled by that.
[00:18:34].000] – Gene
So we’re talking about employee retention. I want to be clear you want the low for to leave.
[00:18:39].940] – Amanda
I was so frustrated with the low for good stuff. But that’s exactly the reason why you need to be tuned into this because.
[00:18:48].940] – Gene
That kind of person that loafer is driving others away if you don’t have a high enough standard for the work then others won’t take the whole job very seriously and they’ll be looking for a place where they can can really be a self starter that can really be appreciated for doing the work and they want to be surrounded by others that are doing the work.
[00:19:10].240] – Amanda
Absolutely I mean this the low four wheel drive away you’re eight players. Absolutely. They can’t stand to see this. And so you know a players want to work with other players not with loafers. Got to lose the low.
[00:19:27].520] – Gene
All right. So let’s go into number four because it is this is a fun one. We had to put it in there because it happens from time to time. I think you’ve had more experience with this.
[00:19:37].710] – Amanda
Yeah I have.
[00:19:39].330] – Gene
But the fourth type of employee that is killing your employee retention is the hired. That one person that flies off the handle way too quick. They they really overexaggerate certain things. And I’ll be cleared here. You want them to leave too. But you also want to make sure that you’re creating a place and employee experience where these people don’t exist.
[00:20:03].790] – Amanda
Absolutely. I mean for one in this day and age we need to you know employees sense of safety needs to come. It’s paramount to everything else. And in certain situations these hotheads can get pretty extreme and can make you feel unsafe. Now I worked with a certain hothead and we found ourselves always walking on eggshells around this person constantly tiptoeing Oh how is he going to react to this. And you know some situations he would be great in other situations it would just explode. One day he actually threw a chair in a conference room up against the window it bounced back and almost hit somebody but that was actually the day that myself and a few other people decided we were out but cause of this hothead.
[00:20:52].390] – Gene
The one of the number one factors of team success is psychological safety. This comes from the air startle work at Google. It’s done with many times over with companies looking at this. So creating a place where this hothead doesn’t survive doesn’t the last is a really important part of your leadership.
[00:21:12].790] – Amanda
Absolutely. And you know it really is up to the leaders to recognize this kind of behavior and nip it in the bud. Move that person out. This is not something that you want to continue because other people are constantly thinking about. I’ve got to go. I’ve got to get out of here. I can’t continue to work with this person.
[00:21:35].780] – Gene
All right. Number five I think this one’s the hardest two to really get your head around but it is a game changer when you think about this. If you value your culture then this is the type of person that you must let go of. Number five is the toxic superstar. Yes we all have probably work with people that have rubbed us the wrong way but they were good at what they did.
[00:22:02].680] – Amanda
Absolutely.
[00:22:03].160] – Gene
I had a client once where were sitting around with the CEO and the CEOs of this small company about 30 people and we were talking about. Know give me the name of two people that really give you frustration as a leader. Well. Two ladies came up the names came up. I won’t share the names but one of them cried all the time. And I get it like you don’t want to have these conversations and it seemed to me daily that she was crying and I asked why was she crying. Well that gets us back into number two which is the toxic superstar in this in their world. She was a high performer she was. She was in recruiting.
[00:22:42].510] – Gene
She was really able to do the work of two to three employees. Which is impressive. But if it comes at the cost of her being toxic and driving others away because it was truly what I listed through how many people had she drink driven away it was like four in the last like three four months really a very expensive decision to keep that high performer on.
[00:23:03].830] – Amanda
Absolutely. And not only that. Let’s be very clear she was specifically named in exit interviews as this person is the reason I’m leaving.
[00:23:12].620] – Gene
I got I asked details because I was curious about this and there were some excellent actives that were discussed about how she showed up. There was also the fact that she lied to to get work and she would work extra hours on the weekend to cover this up. This toxic superstar is seducing in the sense that they are performing at a higher level than others but it is at the cost of the culture. You as the leader or a manager has to really make some hard decisions because. It is hurting your employee retention.
[00:23:45].830] – Amanda
Absolutely. And just think about the team or the people in her environment. I mean they are constantly thinking about I’ve got to get another job. I’ve got to get out of here because you know this is not an environment that they want to spend eight hours a day and plus. Every single day.
[00:24:04].760] – Gene
So these are the five types of employees that are hurting your employee retention. We went through this. We want to have fun with you because you probably got some of these in your workspace right now.
[00:24:15].700] – Amanda
Absolutely.
[00:24:16].390] – Gene
And I want you to think about this. You. Sit down maybe make a jot a few names down you know where do they fit in this. And are they really hurting the employee experience overall. And are they truly costing people to lead the company.
[00:24:31].340] – Amanda
Absolutely. And I think that when you’re really honest about this and you really start thinking about the different people that would fall into these five categories. It might scare you a little bit. Honestly.
[00:24:45].700] – Gene
So you may be thinking about what do you do with all this because this is not our traditional episode where we’re interviewing people and this is not your traditional episode where we’re giving you the step by step because what we wanted to let you know this we’ve created through a partnership a training about employee retention and it really is something I’m really proud of. It comes along with the stay framework that we’ve mentioned that stay framework will help you be a better leader tomorrow. You can literally Download it today and use it in your next conversation and you will see impact right away.
[00:25:18].560] – Amanda
Absolutely this is something that we have put together through trial and error over the years working with. Our own company working with other companies and really seeing what are these managers and leaders that are the highest performers that have melded together a team that is just trucking along and is just super efficient and really seems to just go at it every single day. What are they doing so what are some of their best practices. So we have pulled them together and let me tell you some of these are ridiculously easy. And it is shocking to me every single day when I see leaders and managers not doing this and then yet they’re also complaining I can’t keep my people. Well here is the answer and it is…
[00:26:05].840] – Gene
STAY framework can be downloaded at GENEHAMMETT.COM/STAY. Well that wraps up this episode really excited to be able to share this work with you to come together with my beautiful wife. I really have a lot of respect for what she’s done in the corporate world and really wanted to share something with you because I feel like you could be the leaders that you really wanted to be by understanding these types of employees but more by getting that stay framework so make sure you go ahead do that.
[00:26:33].860] – Amanda
Absolutely. And of course join us for the free training that we will be doing along with that and we’ll be including our partners at Velocity global. So thank you again for joining us. And we will see you in the next episode.
[00:26:33].860] – Gene
As always lead with courage.
Disclaimer: This transcript was created using YouTube’s translator tool and that may mean that some of the words, grammar, and typos come from a misinterpretation of the video.
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