Six Ways to Keep Your Best People

Conduct “stay” interviews. Exit interviews provide valuable information about the mood in a workplace, Haddaway says, but they only catch people as they’re headed out the door. She recommends that leaders also hold “stay” interviews with key employees about their concerns. Such conversations both help leaders understand the current culture and help employees feel heard. “It’s an opportunity to sit down and ask, ‘What motivates you? What gets you out of bed in the morning? Why do you continue to work for our organization? What’s driving you?’” she said.

Host “anchor days.” Return-to-work mandates have often backfired, but employees may still crave opportunities to reconnect in person. McKinley has developed a compromise, announcing days when senior staff will be in the office and giving employees the option to come in on those days. “We’ve created a company-wide calendar to support that, so people can see that when they come in they won’t be sitting by themselves,” he said.

Get middle managers on the same page. Not every leader will embrace flexible work arrangements with the same enthusiasm. But in the same way that an association board speaks in one voice, even if the board isn’t always unanimous, managers should be applying policies and showing support for them across the board. “Some managers more easily embrace the flexibility mindset,” Hockman said. “Whether you’re a chief human resources officer or CEO or anybody in the C-suite, you need to help your managers have a more consistent approach.”

Keep communication constant, in groups and individually. One element of consistent management is ensuring that there are regular opportunities for communication. That can be check-ins or stay interviews, but it can also involve digital tools like Slack, which some employees may be more comfortable with.  “Instant-messaging services allow people to be in regular communication with teams,” Haddaway said. “But really making sure that managers are carving out time to do one-on-one meetings with each of their team members is one of the most effective ways to really stay on top of what’s going on with each individual employee.”

Ask your people what they want, but be clear about outcomes. It’s important to lead a discussion about worker preferences, Haddaway says, so long as it’s clear that leaders won’t always be able to satisfy every request. Every need will be tempered by larger organization needs. “Find out what it is they want in an ideal work situation, but ask that question with caution,” she said. “If you are in an environment, for example, where your board is very adamant about getting people back to the office space, then you know you have to kind of balance those two competing priorities.”