Spinning a winning web: attracting and retaining top performers

Physician Executive, Sept-Oct, 2004 by Edward J. O'Connor, C. Marlena Fiol

Many leaders complain about how difficult it is to attract, rely on, and retain good people. Yet, simultaneously, they engage in practices that actually encourage turnover rather than attract and retain top performers. In addition, hiring the cream of the crop and keeping them happy may reduce your incidents of bad behavior.

Faced with few job applicants and many positions to fill, it is easy to fall into the destructive trap of inaccurately putting your best foot forward in a misguided attempt to build an applicant pool. While many such human resource practices exist, costly common ones include: providing overly favorable information that creates false expectations (versus telling prospects "how it really is"), as well as hiring well-intentioned people who become misfits in a misrepresented culture or in misrepresented jobs. (1)

Not telling the truth about who you are as a leader and the way things will be done in your organization is another sure recipe for generating additional employee mismatches, dissatisfaction and desertion.

For example, calling physicians "partners" in your organization while requiring them to play "mother may I" is unlikely to produce the sense of ownership required to attract and retain top people.

Some organizations such as Harley-Davidson, Southwest Airlines, and Baptist Health Care in Pensacola, Fla., have documented histories of being fully staffed, attracting large applicant pools and retaining top performers, often at lower than average market wages. (2)

How is this possible? What can be done to create the authentically attractive environment needed to be a magnet for long-term loyal and productive employees who are hopefully less likely to exhibit problem behaviors?

Loyalty counts

Why is the loyalty of your people so important? Employees who are not loyal are unlikely to build a supply of customers who are. (3) Evidence indicates that a powerful way to build enduring financial success is to develop the kind of work environment that attracts, focuses and keeps talented employees. (4)

Long-term competitiveness depends on being able to attract top talent in every role. (5) And retention is essential. Recent findings indicate that a health care organization's employee replacement costs, for example, average between 50 and 150 percent of an individual's base pay. (6)

Spinning a web that attracts and retains high performers cuts turnover, lowers hiring costs, reduces training costs, increases efficiency, improves customer satisfaction, recruiting and retention, increases both customer and employee referrals, increases productivity and enhances the bottom line. (3,5)

People vote with their feet. If you do not provide a magnetic environment, the resulting costs include lower performance and large outlays in turnover expenses. In addition, your most important strategic asset may well be making its way to your competitors.

How can you attract and retain high-performance people? What practices have others followed in building an alluring environment that might be useful in your health care organization?

Here are some examples from diverse entrepreneurial organizations whose leaders recognize that while it may be costly to retain top people, it is even more costly not to do so. (5,7)

Which of these diverse practices have you employed in your health care organization? Which additional practices might you adopt in order to put people first and reap the benefits of a highly attractive environment?

Support Development

* Provide or economically support education

* Create development plans with all interested individuals

Implement Incentives

* Provide bonuses when organizational objectives are met

* Create a star award program in which employees, patients or visitors can nominate members of your staff for both recognition and rewards

Provide Recognition

* Give supervisors "goodwill toolboxes" (e.g., gift certificates, movie passes, candy) enabling them to reward employees on the spot

* Provide regular praise/recognition for people who perform well, including celebration get-togethers when organizational successes occur

Communicate Information

* Provide full-day orientations, monthly meetings and yearly retreats to communicate understandable explanations of relevant financial and quality indicators

* Clarify specifically what is expected of each person in your organization

Collect Information

* Eat together with and listen to your people (rather than with others who share your organizational level)

* Set up an electronic town forum where people can ask questions or provide their ideas

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Reduce Performance Barriers

* Expect managers to assist with patients (to the best of their abilities) when overload conditions strain capabilities

* Ensure people have the tools, equipment and materials necessary to do their best

Provide Lifestyle Support

* Operate a service that handles diverse chores for staff members, such as picking up groceries, dropping off dry cleaning or driving a car to a dealer for repair

* Provide staff 15-minute chair massages