We Can't Blame HR for Everything...
Early in this process, we looked at two separate profitability killers that nearly always feed off each other and contribute to just about every metric a company tracks: the cost of high turnover and the cost of constant recruiting. In far too many cases, the responsibility for each lands squarely in the lap of someone in the human resources department. When that person takes even the slightest bit of initiative, they'll work their tail off to produce the results their team needs. I say that with confidence because I've been the one to carry that responsibility for a few different organizations.
Several times through this process, I've referenced hiring 225 new employees in eighteen months for one facility, and the total head count increased only by about ten. As we looked at steps leaders could take to address the cost of an unaccountable workforce, I even shared how 150 of those 225 were for one specific job title, a role that likely had the most direct impact on the overall quality of the products our customers depended on. You may think this was an isolated example that couldn't possibly impact your company's bottom line the same way, and as this was the first role where I held direct and complete responsibility for the hiring process, I couldn't imagine that this same thing could be going on anywhere else either. I was dead wrong!
In nearly every organization I've worked with since, whether through providing support for their HR and recruiting needs or through the resources we've shared with the entire leadership team, I've seen pockets that showed nearly identical patterns. While the numbers weren't nearly as exaggerated, the ratios were eerily similar, primarily due to most of those companies having much lower overall head counts. I'd argue that the costs made even more of a dent in the overall profitability since those smaller organizations didn't have as much room to absorb them.
There wasn't much I truly enjoyed about the compliance side of safety. Still, something I learned to do well was identify trends and factors that contributed to incidents. Applying that same thought process to recruitment and retention pointed right to John Maxwell's statement in chapter sixteen of Leadership Gold, which I shared here previously:
Some studies estimate that as many as 65% of people leaving companies do so because of their managers. We may say that people quit their job or their company, but the reality is that they usually quit their leaders. The "company" doesn't do anything negative to them. People do.
As I dug into the issues causing the highest turnover, creating the need for ongoing recruiting in specific parts of each company, I found case after case showing where the team members who left had been butting heads with the individual they reported directly to. Let's be honest here: the person who says they get along with everyone all the time will lie to us about other things too. But that's different from the point I'm making! These were all situations where the revolving door never seemed to stop turning, and someone in a leadership role seemed to be the one spinning it. And every time, that same person was pointing a finger back at whoever hired a lousy employee to begin with!
When Johnny has a problem with Jim, and Johnny has a problem with Joey, and Johnny has a problem with Susie, Johnny may be the problem. When it comes to capturing the profitability lost to poor retention and ongoing recruiting, the burden doesn't all lie with Johnny's HR department!
In the same chapter of Leadership Gold, John also said, "As leaders, we'd like to think that when people leave, it has little to do with us. But the reality is that we are often the reason." While we had seen how our Emerging Leader Development course provided leaders at all levels of their companies with a foundation for building stronger engagement and buy-in with their teams, and our Leading At The Next Level program was offering ongoing support in many areas, we saw a glaring need for developing a resource explicitly geared at detailing how much of a role every leader plays in the recruitment, retention, and culture throughout their organization. So, we created a course to deal with just that, something they could use as a guide to building AND keeping a great team.
Each resource I've detailed here emphasizes the importance of effective communication in capturing lost profitability. Still, poor communication can impact profitability in every part of an organization, even if the leaders have mastered it. With that in mind, the next tool we'll look at has helped address that better than anything else I've ever seen!
It's Not Just Tied to Title or Position!
I've made no attempt here to hide how much impact I believe leaders have on the profitability of their organizations, but I've been very intentional about emphasizing that a position or title has very little to do with whether or not someone is leading the people around them. In case someone missed it the last time I shared John's pearl of wisdom, "Leadership is influence. Nothing more, nothing less." And while not nearly enough organizations invest the necessary resources into developing those soft skills that do indeed make such a measurable difference in the bottom line (when applied the way we've been looking at through this process), I've seen all too many cases where any effort to provide that kind of development is focused exclusively on the folks in supervisory and management roles. The only type of development the rest of the team members get (all the individual contributors), if they get any at all, is aimed at the hard skills that are perceived to be the only ones that have any real impact on productivity.
I'll ask you again: who fits the mold of an individual contributor? In chapter two of Emotional Intelligence 2.0, Travis Bradberry explains "The Impact of EQ": "EQ is so critical to success that it accounts for 58 percent of performance in all types of jobs." Couple that statistic with the fact that no one truly works completely independent of every other human being in their workplace, and I believe we have a strong argument that effective communication is vital for all of us. Poor communication in any pocket of a company can kill profitability even when the executive team thinks they've mastered it!
The main challenge I initially had with Bradberry's statement on the importance of emotional intelligence to all types of work was that after reading and studying what seemed like a ton of material on the subject, I still hadn't figured out a practical way to increase my own-let alone develop it within any group of people I was responsible for leading. Then I realized I could take a page from the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup playbook! (Remember the old commercials showing someone accidentally-yet brilliantly-combining peanut butter and chocolate?)
As I connected the dots between what Bradberry and many others had shared on emotional intelligence with what I had learned from studying what William Marston built as The Model of Human Behavior and the tools Cindy and I were already using to help teams communicate better, I saw a direct path for increasing effectiveness in all four components of emotional intelligence: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management.
By using the scientifically validated DISC assessments and other powerful tools we're licensed with as Certified Human Behavior Consultants through Personality Insights, we not only help supervisors, managers, and executives communicate more effectively with their teams; we can also help increase emotional intelligence at all levels of the organization and ensure that everyone who's earned influence with the team members around them is better equipped to lead in a way that has a positive impact on the bottom line! This definitely helps capture profit that's often lost to poor communication, but it also plays a big part in removing confusion and increasing accountability.
Balancing Tough Conversations
Even when the message is crystal clear, there will be times when team members fall short of our expectations. While this will likely never happen when we have ample time to push all our other responsibilities aside to deal with it, a significant part of maintaining the influence and respect we've earned as leaders will hinge on ensuring we address those situations. It can certainly be easy to procrastinate on this, especially if the miss on a deliverable wasn't a huge deal or the poor performance was from someone with a history of solid behavior. But putting off a tough conversation sends a distinct message to two separate groups of team members-and how either group interprets it can kill quite a bit of profitability.
As I wrapped up our look at the cost of an unaccountable workforce, I shared about a fellow who read an article I had contributed to a quarterly industry magazine and felt the need to fill out a form on the homepage of our website telling me that my views on addressing unacceptable behavior in the workplace were supporting a woke culture. I'm still trying to figure out how he got that from what I had written, but I'm guessing it will be easier to find out how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop!
To avoid even the appearance of supporting said culture, I'll emphasize once more that two critical responsibilities for each of us in leadership roles are maintaining high expectations throughout the teams we lead AND addressing the situation when someone falls short of those expectations. I'm not suggesting that this should always be a hard-line approach, but we cannot look the other way-regardless of who may call us names...
This may be the one thing I've seen leaders struggle with more than anything else. And to be perfectly honest, I understand why! Having this kind of conversation-whether it's with a longtime friend or one of the most skilled members of our workforce-comes with the potential for undesired consequences.
Over all the years that Cindy and I have been writing and delivering new lessons for our Leading At The Next Level program, we've had quite a few requests to share specific ones with various clients. More than any others to date, we've been asked to package and customize two in particular so supervisors, managers, and even executives within each respective organization have a clear roadmap for handling these types of conversations with the right balance of candor and care. We provide a foundation by detailing The Power of a Candid Conversation-and just how much profitability can be lost by avoiding these conversations for any reason. Then we offer a set of practical steps by sharing How Leaders Improve Results by Balancing Candor with Care.
We've seen leaders at all levels of their organizations walk away from these lessons with the framework they need to deal with tough situations while maintaining strong relationships with the individuals they're addressing. That's essential in each company's overall performance and profitability. Still, it's also been something we've been able to include for the folks who don't have positional authority but do have tremendous knowledge that needs to be passed on to the less experienced folks around them. But we also saw that capturing the profitability so often lost to poor training required something with a unique focus.
