welcome to magnet culture's workforce webinar prioritizing 2022 workforce retention initiatives assessing then prioritizing to keep people longer my name is jess ray i am a workforce strategist on cara stiletto's team at magnet culture every day i work with clients to help prioritize and find solutions to reduce reduce turnover if your priority number one for 2022 is workforce retention you are in the right place so today you'll walk away with a score for different areas of your organization that will help you determine what needs the most attention cara will also share the thought the top five quick wins and long-term initiatives that most companies need to tackle first but be sure to stay for the entire session because we have a special offer for you at the end kara let's dive in hey hello friends hello hello so who's overwhelmed me and everybody else on the call so um what we have figured out recently is that people are so overwhelmed overburdened overloaded and over everything that um we're now finding it hard to even take baby steps what can i even do you know we're just trying to keep our head above water and we love you for that that you are resilient you are sticking it out you are doing the best you can every day and yet we know that the workforce crisis is causing us to rethink how we staff and manage and all of that fun stuff so what we've done just over the past several months is try to figure out okay how can we help companies prioritize when let me guess you've got a million things on your your plate right um we know that we need to um fix our onboarding we know that we need to reinstate management training that got cut because no one had time to sit in classes or we cut it from the budget a long time ago those kind of things we know that we have to reevaluate compensation again even though we just did a comp eval in the fall and gave everybody a bump and now things are crazy again and the companies down the street are paying more so we have to look at all of that we know that we have to rebuild some trust that's lost uh you know we kept saying things like i promise if you just fill tonight's shift i won't call you this weekend and we lied because unknowingly right we it was it was not on purpose but we didn't realize that we were gonna have to call them this weekend no matter what okay so that eroded trust from our team um and and just the whole world right and nobody knows like what what do i do what do i not do who do i trust who do i not trust all these things so we know that's also a major issue there's a lot of things going on so what we've decided to do is to help you all figure out what to prioritize how in the world do we do this um and so we've put together a tool we're gonna walk you through these foundational questions today and we're still kind of fleshing out this tool we've tweaked it over the last few months as i've been working with leadership teams and running these questions past their team and getting feedback and figuring out you know what works and what doesn't and all that so we're excited to have a new audit tool coming out this spring that we will have but right now i wanted to help you with something even if i don't have the full tool ready to go we wanted to give you kind of the mini foundational questions that we're basing a lot of the audit around because it's january hello goal setting uh prioritizing what you've got on your plate quarterly goals and quarterly focus areas and things like that so that's what we're going to focus on today is helping you prioritize by asking you these questions to help you figure out kind of where are you going to get the most bang for your buck on on your efforts and as jeff said we're going to talk about some quick wins little baby steps we can take even when we're overwhelmed and busy and then we'll of course plant the seed for some future longer term initiatives that you know you need to work on but today ain't the day okay so we've got to move um and and find those gaps but also just take whatever steps we can take to move forward so um i look forward to your feedback for sure we really really um want to make sure that we get this right as we're building it so please let us know if you think more questions or deeper questions or different questions should be included in this stuff moving forward so first things first we need to um really assess and look at where are the biggest gaps we're going to identify stronger weaker areas and figure out how to how to make those changes so what i want you to do now is go grab a pen and paper all right grab a pen and paper or if you're digital that's fine just pull up a little spreadsheet you're gonna have to score yourself on the next 10 questions that i mentioned to you okay so you're going to score yourself on the next 10 questions you need a pen and paper or a spreadsheet something tablet anything and get that ready because we're going to we're going to move forward on this okay so you're ready to go ready to go ready to go okay so here it is we're gonna move pretty quickly here but the team is going to um put the questions in the chat as well so if i happen to move too quickly and on to the next page you can look in the chat which is down at the bottom of your screen you can look at that chat and and grab that last question okay so and i really don't want you to over think these questions either my friends don't sit and think about you know well there's this example but then there's that example like just go with your gut right now i know a lot of you do employee surveys um and you have some of this data but we're also not taking the time to sit and assess all of that right we're not taking the time to dive into those metrics in a lot of cases so what we decided to do and i'm going to tell you up front the answer to these questions is subjective it is your opinion about how you think the staff feel but i decided instead of us the managers running around like crazy right now instead of us answering the questions for ourselves and how we feel i want you to stop for a minute i want you to flip yourself around put yourself in the staff shoes okay put yourself in the staff shoes and just guess at how you think your staff would answer the following statements right we're gonna do agree or disagree you know one to five so a one is disagree not happening i wish i could vote zero you know kind of thing versus a five is we're good totally agree it's solid okay there's your your range but keep in mind you're you're answering for how your staff feel about these things so i'm gonna go pretty quickly like i said so hopefully you've got your pen and paper ready to go all right here we go statement number one our staff feel their managers are effectively communicating don't overanalyze just go with your gut okay our staff feel their managers are effectively communicating and remember this is right now this is not you know all the time this is in the moment we're dealing with the present situation that we have at hand okay all right question two is our staff feel our onboarding is effective okay grab your pen and paper answer one to five here second one our staff feel our onboarding is effective whether they're a new hire that just came through it or they are staff out on the floor handling the new hires coming in through that onboarding do your staff think that onboarding is currently effective our staff trust one another this is question three okay are do your staff trust one another do you feel that is the case okay number four put yourself in their shoes our staff feel their workloads are manageable right now okay not in general at this moment if i asked your staff our staff feel their workloads are manageable one to five okay [Music] fifth question our staff feel our managers listen to their team members this is more specific than just communicating effectively which is usually communicating out to the team this question is do the staff feel that the managers listen to them yay or nay okay all right again these questions are in the chat if you missed any of those first five all right by moving on number six our staff feel they are given flexibility with their schedules right now are they given flexibility would they agree with that but they disagree or are they somewhere in between okay our staff feel they are given flexibility with their schedules okay number seven here we go our staff feel their compensation is appropriate for their current role and responsibilities all the responsibilities that they have right now do they feel that their compensation is appropriate for that level of role and responsibility on their plate okay number seven here good job keep going get your pen and paper out answer these questions okay all right number eight our staff feel advancement opportunities within the organization are accessible within a reasonable amount of time okay do they believe that advancement opportunities are accessible to them does your staff feel this way that it's accessible within a reasonable amount of time okay number nine our staff feel their managers are adequately trained for their current leadership roles would you say that most of your staff feel like their bosses their leaders are receiving adequate training to do their job well right now okay are they equipped are they adequately trained for their current leadership roles not how the managers feel remember this is how your staff feel about their managers alrighty last one number 10 okay our staff feel the organization's technology both hardware and software is sufficient for their needs okay is the technology sufficient for their needs would your staff say that things are sufficient up-to-date adequate all right okay so uh i'm gonna have maggie copy all those questions one more time just in case folks came in midway through this audit what we're doing right now is a mini audit of these 10 questions about retention and how your staff feel so she's going to put those back in the chat one more time in case you missed any of those if you just popped on all right so here's my question to you now add up your score okay it's 10 questions a total of 50 points total of 50 points and i would uh love for you to now once you i'm going to give you a second to do the math there right we should have a bunch of a bunch of different questions or a bunch of different scores there from one to five on those ten questions add up your total okay i want you to pop that in the chat and by the way there's no right or wrong and you're not going to get chastised or anything okay so i just want you to also feel that everyone around you is in this similar boat okay so whether you feel like your score is low or high or what not thank you so much oh my goodness they're just flowing in here we've got everything from 23 35 24 18 18 uh 30 19 24 27 oh my goodness okay thank you all so much yeah go ahead and if you haven't yet just pop your your score in there i will tell you man this is right on target because what i'm seeing what i've been seeing is as i'm i'm out working with leadership teams and i'm running these audits right i'm running these questions by all the different managers from different departments and it is it has been almost always between 22 and 35. sometimes we'll have outliers like that we've got some 18 19's in here and sometimes we'll have somebody that's like a 38 or you know something like that but you guys are right on target with with what i'm seeing in similar roles to yours okay so that's what's happening i hope my whole point in in asking you to do this from your staff perspective my whole point is we're busy we're running around like crazy and we are doing the absolute best we can as leaders to stay afloat to keep everything moving to not get too far behind you know we're going like crazy but we have to stop sometimes and think about their perspective how do they see what's going on right even though it's like well you know i did the best onboarding i could oh how about this how about this so you really really have to think about putting yourself in your staff's shoes for a moment because that's when as we look at each one of these scores that's when we can actually um pinpoint some areas that we could make a little tiny difference in our communication in our uh you know just our approach with our people on a daily basis that could make a huge difference to them here we're thinking onboarding schmonboarding and nobody got time for that right so it's not going to happen but yet it really makes a difference to them so even just slight improvements to the onboarding process or communication and things like that can make a really big difference in their experience particularly the new hires not just the folks who've worked with us okay so absolutely all right oh yeah we've got one says has a 40 that's fantastic okay so what i want you to do right now is um we're gonna throw up a poll here and i'd like for you to mark the two lowest scoring categories okay so if you could just go ahead and mark i believe you can check box more than one of these items so just go ahead and mark the two items that you feel like were the lowest and maybe you had three or four scores with a low score just pick the ones that you really think are the um the lowest score on your your deck okay i'm going to give you all just a minute because that'll take take a moment to look back at your answer to those 10 questions and figure out okay figure out where are the lowest scores on that that sheet for you okay all right interesting all right come on in we got a few more people we're waiting on answering that they're still coming in give me just a moment okay oh we've got one taking the lead they were neck and neck there for a minute but now it's uh there's one that's really standing out i'm curious if y'all are gonna if y'all are gonna guess it or not all right okay we're closing it down we're gonna we're gonna in the poll now there we go okay so now you all should see i just hit share results here you should see that yes workloads ben totally called it in the chat workloads workloads workloads but uh as you can see here we had you know lots of people not just one or two that answered every one of those other categories and it was interesting to watch your results because they just kept bouncing back and forth okay so what's incredible to me is that while some companies are doing really good on the communication and trust for example but they're really struggling on the compensation and you know workloads and things like that versus another company may be the exact opposite the communication is just failing miserably right now while we're giving people flexibility and we're paying the best we can but we're not communicating well you know so this tells me that each one of you actually had some different areas that you can work on moving forward okay so fascinating fascinating all right so okay i think i closed that down properly there we go i never know when you're in admin view right what they can see what they can't so all right um what i am seeing right now is if you're scoring mostly fours and fives okay so we didn't we didn't have a whole lot of that where people were up above 40 on this call which is understandable with the crisis that we have going on right now but any of the areas really even of the ten questions any of the areas that you gave it a four or five fabulous move on just go on to the next area because there's other things that need your attention now do you need to keep doing what you're doing absolutely but just make sure that we don't um you know dwell too much on trying to improve a four to a five because if staff is okay with that they're okay with that move on anything that is lower than than a four right a one two or three it's really up to you to figure out where are you going to get the most bang for your buck on implementing a change okay maybe it's just a teeny tiny baby step adjustment or maybe you know oh no we have to overhaul this sucker right with with management or trust building or whatever that is okay so you want to figure out some quick wins that you can do pretty pretty soon like even within the next week within the next month and then we have to plot out a little bit farther out later in the in the year my team we've already met and we've talked about what's our q1 goal what's our q2 focus and goal what's our q3 you know because we know we can't do it all at the same time and we can't get everything done in january so we want to be realistic about that um those conversations okay so look for those quick goals make sure when you're prioritizing you can't multitask if you say okay you're going to work on this and you're going to work on this and i'm going to work on this we're all going to get it done if if we put too many things on at the same time all it does is push everything's finish line out so i have learned from project management classes in the past that it's much better to work on one initiative at a time now is it reality that we can say i'm not doing anything else except there's one thing heck no but if you what what i say is i have a priority project at any given time and any free time i have any strategic time that i get sitting at my desk i know to go straight to that instead of going oh my gosh well i could be working on this i could be working on that which one should i work on right if i have my priority list when i have that available time and i even block it out on my schedule that's exactly what i go to that's where i head instead of contemplating which one which one right that just wastes time so we do the goal setting and the prioritizing ahead of time to know that month or that quarter what i should be working on and if you are able to look out and set some goals for down the road be realistic okay if you think something really will take you just two weeks or four weeks to do great but if you're saying you know realistically i'll be lucky to get that done in six or eight weeks that should be the goal you don't want to frustrate yourself even more than we're frustrated right now okay no sense in beating your head against a wall so just want to be realistic about that and then set your your priority list in that way okey-dokey all righty so now what we're going to talk about is some quick wins and how to take action my friends so i picked out some of the ones from the questions these 10 audit questions i picked out the ones that i've seen with the lowest scores or not just lowest scores but just the greatest room for improvement particularly on the quick wins side since we need to take some baby steps right now and and just do a little bit better each day with our communication and and things like that okay so for each one of these i don't i don't want to upset you but i'm going to give you a quick win and i'm going to give you a longer term initiative just i'm just planting the seed i'm not telling you that you're not doing good enough you're doing amazing all right but i do want to plant the seed because depending on your scores you may want to set one of these as a longer 6 month or 12 month goal for yourself your team your company okay all right so first things first management communication a quick win on this sucker is to check on your people okay check on them are they doing okay are they doing okay we've hit yet another wall of burnout and frustration as we've dealt with the roller coaster these last two years and so a quick win right now check in with your seasoned folks right you're dependable long lasting uh you know your trees as we call them that are deep rooted in the company check on them because they may be burning out their kids school might be shut back down like my kid's school just got shut back down okay they may be really stressing again and have hit a wall and need some support need some encouragement and then with the newer hires check on them check on them not 30 60 90 days but 30 60 90 hours in the job okay so check on your people genuine check-ins too not drive-bys but just a real genuine thing okay and then for longer term initiative absolutely have to reinstate or launch management training and make sure that your managers are getting the tools they need to be successful in their roles okay so have to look at that down the road maybe even if you're getting your next fiscal year budget together make sure to plant that seed in that space okay all right next up is we've just got you know we just picked a few of these for example um one of these is onboarding we have to make sure that the onboarding is not cut cut cut cut cut back to nothing but check the box uh compliance okay it cannot just be compliance-based we used to do a conversation about who we are and our core values and the culture and unwritten expectations and here's who's who at the company and we used to do that stuff and we got so busy that we cut it back so a quick win is just reinstate some of that okay you don't have to reinstate the whole thing but just pick a couple pieces about your core values who you are your mission those kind of things that will help the new hires have a better more positive experience which is going to keep them longer all right so quick win reinstate that a longer term initiative is going to be checklists it's absolutely going to be um clear defined role specific onboarding checklists that is critical down the road okay doesn't have to be done now but putting that on your list to make that a better experience for folks all right next is workloads has been totally called it in the chat there uh workloads workloads workloads we were already tight and lean trying to do more with less before the pandemic hit and before the workforce crisis hit okay so at this point um the quick win because everyone is overloaded appreciation appreciation appreciation thanking people for showing up mega thanking people for pulling a double or taking over time you know extra shifts anything like that and just supporting them similar to the check-in genuine check-ins for people we want to know we want them to know that we are here for them and we understand we're asking so much of them but we also appreciate so much of what they are doing and just it's beyond your you know beyond your comprehension of how folks have have done this for so long and that you're beyond thrilled uh that they continue to come back every day and find this this um you know energy to do that okay so be genuine about it dig deep find some appreciation and show more support i know you're doing that it's just a reminder to kind of maybe turn up the dial a little bit in case you haven't thanked and showed specific support and appreciation to your folks even this week okay the longer term initiative on workloads is job pruning so similar to a rose bush we have to prune back at some point so that the rose bush can bloom bigger and brighter in the future so i'm working with a lot of leadership teams right now on how do we job prune and take some things off of people's plates because we know we've gotten that kind of out of whack uh almost permanently now and we need to reassess workloads job loads how much can a new hire do for example in in a realistic frame of mind not we just push them onto the floor and they just have to do what they have to do because we're short staffed but once we get our head back above water and get staffing stability again then what are the realistic expectations for a new hire who is still learning right they're in the learning curve they can't just jump right in at full productivity as we're kind of forcing them to do right now okay so just something to think about but again longer term initiative and then on the compensation side of course most of you have probably done you know done some bumps and whatnot and i'm aware that some of this is in your control and some of this might not be there's probably some executives on the call right now that do have compensation uh control and decision making power and some of you do not and so i understand that but a another quick win right now is just a small bump across the board we know the cost the consumer price index just keeps climbing and last i checked we were over six percent as far as how much the cost of basic stuff right groceries utilities gas that stuff is going up so if we haven't given our folks at least a six percent raise in the last 12 months they're actually making less than they used to make after one of the hardest years of their career they can't even buy the same bread milk and eggs that they used to so for decision makers we really have to have that sincere conversation about um just significant bumps of across the board not even merit based but just across the board cost of living increases okay so quick win there but a longer term initiative is definitely analyzing deeper analysis of competition and role specific type of raid ranges pay ranges sorry um it's hard to say so yeah thinking really about where do we need to be in relation to the competition and also how hard is the job compared to other jobs in in our community or in our town even of can somebody go work over here and it's an easier job that pays more well we're going to have a harder time recruiting over here then so we're going to have to re-evaluate some roles within our company and what do those pay wages look like okay so really doing that and then also educating your staff on total comp hey you not only get paid this per hour or this in your salary but we cover this insurance this retirement this paid time off you know and really educating people about all of that okay so um then we've got the last one here with just some quick wins and another longer term initiative is advancement opportunities your staff i know it's crazy even though they're busy and you know stressed they still want mentoring they still want growth and advancement opportunities in most cases and so a quick win on this one is simply micro mentoring think about almost every interaction you have with your folks because we don't have time to sit down for an hour-long mentoring session right now and instead we want to trickle in the micro mentoring into the one-on-one that you already have just in the hallway where you're chit chatting or the staff huddles that you have dirt for each shift do just one minute two minutes five minutes of micro mentoring training setting expectations any of that kind of stuff can be a quick win and that is immediately actionable that you can start trickling that into your day and your interactions okay the longer term initiative of course is professional development and career pathing right and figuring out um you know where people want to go with their career do they want more education do they want to stay in their role but grow do they want to switch roles in the company you know figuring that out really getting to know our people and that can help keep them longer believe it or not if you support their goals even if they're going to bounce out of the company someday they'll stay with you longer if you support their efforts and their development in some way all right so there we go i hope that somewhere along the way you know we've got days and days worth of days and days worth of strategy discussions and retention conversations and what not to have but i specifically wanted to cover these 10 questions of the audit so you can see where you might be able to get the most bang for your buck on some some quick wins and some efforts that you can take and then also um to give you some longer term initiatives to think about and start planting those seeds with your executive team okay so um if we do nothing just think about it here's an example if you just do 5 to 10 minutes of micro mentoring and micro training for your team think about in 6 months 12 months your team members will have actually received hours worth of mentoring and training but if you do nothing if we just keep running around and just fighting the fires and doing that and not checking in with our people you know and not sprinkling in some training and mentoring and not checking on some of this stuff then i i fear in a month three months six months we might still be underwater so baby steps right just baby steps my friends that's where we need to go with this so i hope these questions were were super helpful for you and i'm going to pass things back over to jess to to wrap up so awesome job love that and just to remind everyone as kara said prioritizing those lowest scores first is a great place to say where do i start where do i start that's a great place to start and talk with your team um it we're really excited about the momentum that we had in 2021 we were able to help so many of our clients leaders supervisors managers executives uh navigate today's incredibly challenging workforce um and how to manage the the situation so if you're feeling overwhelmed by all the different retention initiatives um i would love to have the opportunity to discuss your top issues on a no strings attached call help maybe you figure out some additional initiatives that would fit maybe your industry specifically um one thing to remember there is no magic wand um but each training will move the needle real change really comes from consistent effort and focus on retention i'd love to chat and see how we can support you so you can use the link in the chat to schedule a call with me or email me just at magnetculture.com um those 10 questions that kara was going through we highly recommend that you use those with your management team and they can be found on our magnetvault.com website we've also added a few more um really fun items too we have a new professionalism video that's available in the vault a great two-minute little training video for your leadership and as well as your front line um and some additional resources so for this um webinar today we would love to offer the attendees um pricing for 2021 through the end of january so what does that mean that means for micro learning video series for our management training workshops our online workforce retention boot camp um any assessments or leadership skill building programs we will honor our 2021 pricing through the end of january um we wanted to give that gift over to you guys as um we have a lot of clients right now and just organizations in general who we know are trying to juggle a lot of balls so perhaps extending that on will help ensure that your leaders have the proper training to be successful this year awesome so thanks jess and uh yeah if you have any questions feel free to put those in the chat we'll stick around for a few minutes but as we know the price of everything is going up right so we wanted to help you lock in our 2021 uh training and program pricing and whatnot so just give us a holler if you want to work together this year if you just want to have a chat about your scores from the audit um and get some advice there too we don't charge by the hour for any of that fun stuff just reach out and give us a holler so hope you all have a wonderful wonderful uh week and thanks to those of you who have to go thanks so much and we'll stick around for some questions so it looks like is the micro learning series topic list on the website yes in fact um i think uh yeah jess just put the professionalism video series there we have several video series like micro learning video series packages right now we have a retention package it's like 17 little videos from our teachings we have a professionalism series there's 24 or so videos that are little two-minute how to be more professional type of videos those are great for micro mentoring too that the manager can just show them on their phone at the beginning of a staff meeting and they can talk about it for just five minutes and then move on right so yeah those lists are on there we also i think we have a generational class if you want just a small series of that we have those videos what uh the pandemic did is gifted us video right it gifted us virtual and it gifted us the opportunity to build this studio and to make those kind of recordings that you can have then 24 7 anytime all right so we did have a question come in as well cara oh yeah sorry how were the audit questions determined they'd love to know more about that yeah so honestly it was just from what we were seeing out in the market we were just hearing from talking to managers now i was on the road in 2021 you know we kind of went uh from famine to feast as far as traveling i wasn't traveling for about 18 months during the pandemic and then in june things opened up and i was on the road i think 22 or 23 weeks in a row this fall and it just came from talking to all the managers and some of the staff as i was able to tour different buildings and whatnot and asking them you know if you had a magic wand what would you change what's the most frustrating thing you're seeing right now it was a lot of the same it was a lot of the same things that came up over and over and over and if you followed our work for several years you will know that before the pandemic and even even really just before the last six months we didn't talk a whole lot about compensation it's mostly about the culture and the management leadership styles and things like that that help to keep people longer but because of the massive change in wages over this last six to nine months we've even started getting into those conversations about the competitive landscape of wages and the comp analysis and what does total comp mean to your employees and things like that so we we plugged in a few new things that you probably haven't seen on any of our past uh tools or webinars or conversations and that's the technology piece how do we reduce our reliance on manpower for example because sometimes we just can't even fill positions so how do we get the right technology and innovation in here and then of course the compensation questions and a lot of the other ones came from years worth of discussions with managers around our magnet m-a-g-n-e-t framework that comes out of the book staying power right so if you don't already have a copy of the book staying power you can grab that online amazon audible kindle and get a copy of that because it also has strategies that are specifically tied to these questions uh just not all 10 of them right because we're evolving these conversations so i hope that answered your question and and like i said we keep tweaking them and and getting the wording just right uh to make sure that this tool we're building this spring is gonna be spot on for what you guys need to help you prioritize all right anything else jess those are the questions we have so far kara excellent well i'm gonna call it a day and you guys can always email us um jess is jess magnetculture.com i'm kara c-a-r-a magnet.com and we will catch y'all later have a great day keep doing what you're doing we love you bye