When organizational cultures value people, they achieve higher rates of employee engagement and retention. They also benefit from stronger employer brand (as the word spreads that they value people) and tighter strategic alignment (when employees who feel valued want to advance the organization’s interests). I just wrote a post about this topic for the Human Capital Institute’s blog. In the post, I tell the story of how Admiral Vern Clark, Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) for the U.S. Navy, increased the element of Human Value in the Navy’s culture and the effect it had on first term reenlistment rates. You can read more about it at this link or below.
Creating a Culture that Attracts (and Retains) Talent
In the first post of this series, I shared that at most organizations 75 percent of employees are not engaged in their work. Recent research from the Corporate Executive Board shows that of the 25 percent who are engaged, only 10 percent align their behavior with organizational goals. That’s right, only one out of ten employees are both engaged and aligned with organizational strategy!
In the earlier post, I explained how communicating an organization’s Inspiring Identity is one means leaders can use to improve employee engagement. The second way is to increase Human Value in the organization’s culture. In a nutshell, this element is all about valuing people and making sure they feel valued.
When Admiral Vern Clark was promoted to become Chief of Navy Operations (CNO) of the U.S. Navy in 2000, the Navy was not meeting its first term re-enlistment goal of 38 percent. Concerned about its impact on military preparedness, Admiral Clark made winning the war for talent his number one priority as CNO. He did several things to make sailors feel more valued.
- Clark communicated to everyone that the Navy’s competitive advantage was the “genius of our people” and that it was necessary for everyone to learn and grow to become the sailors and human beings they were capable of becoming.
- He required that performance appraisals provide constructive feedback to help sailors learn and grow.
- He asked leaders to mentor young sailors and made them accountable for mentoring as part of their performance review.
- He established the Naval Education and Training Command with twelve Navy Centers of Excellence, a huge investment in training to help sailors improve their skills.
- He changed the Navy’s job assignment system to allow sailors to bid on open positions rather than being forced into positions and locations they didn’t like.
A little more than a year after Admiral Clark was appointment as CNO, the Navy’s first term re-enlistment rate soared to 56.7 percent!
Do the leaders in your organization value people? Do they treat people as human beings or as human doings? Do they know people’s stories? Do they appreciate their strengths? Do they help them achieve their potential? There is a lot of wisdom in the old saying that “people don’t care what you know unless they know that you care.”
Human Value is essential to engage people. If this is a problem in your organization, identify the leaders who do this well and make them role models for others. Find out the practices of these leaders and share them with others. Have the leaders who are good at valuing others mentor those who need help. And remember, no one drifts toward Human Value. If you are not intentional about developing a culture that values people, you will by default develop a culture that is indifferent or toxic to people. The failure to be intentional is why 90 percent of employees are not engaged or aligned with organizational goals.
In the next blog post, I’ll describe the third area leaders can focus on to attract, engage, align and retain employees.
Michael Lee Stallard (www.michaelleestallard.com) speaks and teaches about leadership, employee engagement, productivity and innovation. He is the primary author of Fired Up or Burned Out and has spoken at leading organizations including Google, NASA, and GE. This is his second career. In his first, he was chief marketing officer for the private wealth management businesses at Morgan Stanley and Charles Schwab.
