This week, I was a guest on the Marketing Freaks Podcast by Overdrive Digital and the topic was one that I imagine a bunch of you will be interested in: how to be a better manager.
If you’re a podcast person, you can find links to your platform of choice here and go have a listen.
Recently, we’ve talked a lot about what to do when someone wants to leave or whether you should give someone a pay raise or promotion when they hand in their notice. Admittedly, these are necessary to learn about but are also very reactive in nature i.e. you’re trying to manage a situation that may already be out of your control.
Today, we’re going to talk about how you can be a bit more proactive and keep the retention of your team as high as possible. We’ll focus on a few actionable ways to overcome the most common reasons why your team may get tempted to look at other roles and potentially leave.
Before we get to that, a quick sidenote on team retention and why you shouldn’t aim for 100% team retention.
Why aiming for 100% team retention is a mistake
I made this mistake early in my career when I was running my own agency. I set a goal of 100% team retention which basically meant that we didn’t ever want anyone to leave. Up until that point, about two years into the agency, no one had left and it felt like the right thing to try and continue.
However, not only is it a very unrealistic (probably impossible) goal to set, it’s not a good one. Of course, you should do your best to retain your team for as long as possible, because replacing good people takes time and costs money. But there comes a point when it’s the right time for everyone, even your strongest team members, to move on and work somewhere else.
If you set a goal of 100% team retention, you may end up trying to keep someone who you should actually allow to leave, just so that you hit this unrealistic goal.
Retaining 100% of your team can also present problems because it naturally limits progression for some of them. Those in senior positions will block progression for others and unless you’re growing at a crazy pace, there simply won’t be enough senior positions for your people to progress into.
Set clear expectations around pay reviews and promotions
Whilst I can’t provide an easy to follow template for all of you when it comes to how much to pay your team, how often to review that pay and how often to promote etc, I can provide some guidance on some fundamental principles that will help you with team retention.
Define pay bands
For each role that you have, set pay bands so that your team knows exactly where they sit within that band and what they can work towards in terms of pay reviews. This means that they won’t have unrealistic expectations as to what they may earn within that role.
Define how often pay reviews happen
For most companies, they will carry out a pay review every 12 months. But whatever it is for your company, you need to communicate this to your team so that they know when to expect a pay review and possible pay increase. This helps prevent them asking for ad hoc ones when you can’t give them.
Define job role progression paths and expectations
When it comes to managing expectations around promotions, you should have a clear job description for each role within your team and show how they link together in terms of progression paths.
For example:
In this example, someone who is a Junior Designer can see exactly what roles are ahead of them and therefore, what to expect from their next promotion.
Ultimately, these principles may not completely solve issues around pay and promotion, but setting expectations and being clear about pay and promotions can help prevent a bunch of issues appearing.
Create (and keep updated) career progression plans
In order to retain people, you need to give them a solid progression plan which is consistently updated and kept relevant, whilst containing a combination of small and large “next steps”. Everyone always needs a next step in their career and if they don’t have it, it can lead to them looking elsewhere for it.
A big next step could be a promotion or a pay rise. Whilst a small next step may be achieving a certification or managing a new type of project for the first time.
Whatever it is, you need to always have someone working towards something that is meaningful to them and the business.
Run regular one-on-ones with your team
I make no secret of how I think that running effective one-on-one meetings is a potential superpower for managers. One of the key reasons that I believe this is that they have the ability to help you surface issues before they escalate and get out of control.
In the context of team retention, this means that it’s important to have regular, open communication with your team so that you can pick up on times when they may be getting a bit unsettled or thinking of leaving.
You may not be able to catch it every time, but you can give yourself a chance of spotting it if you have regular one-on-one meetings with them and build a strong relationship. This can mean that you spot issues before they escalate and possibly avoid someone leaving because you didn’t catch an issue soon enough.
Mitigate for people leaving
Finally, let’s talk about the bigger picture and address the fact that it’s almost inevitable that valuable team members will leave at some point. The approaches above can help you increase retention, but I also believe that you need to have a back up plan in place.
One way to mitigate for losing people is to have a consistent stream of people coming through the team, ready to replace the people who leave.
For example, having a solid internship or graduate program which onboards people means that you have a steady stream of ambitious people developing and working their way up the company. Whilst it may not mean a like for like replacement for a senior person who leaves, it can help mitigate against it a little bit. Essentially, you should try to have a succession plan for as many people as possible.
This not only provides ways for your junior and mid level people to step up, but it also means that when you do need to replace someone, you can look to hire internally and not have to rely 100% on external recruitment.
Finally, promoting internally when opportunities arise is a great signal to send to the rest of the team to show that there is a path for them that is open.
