Reduce Turnover and Increase Productivity with “Help Me Help You Help Us” Conversations

It’s no secret that most employers continue to struggle with low employee engagement and high turnover, as Gallup’s annual employee engagement research has shown over the years. Clearly “employee engagement programs” aren’t enough. If they were, the engagement needle would have moved.

To improve your ability to create a high engagement, high performance, and low turnover workplace environment, you will need to have managers who are skilled at engaging employees in Employee Engagement Conversations.

Whether framed as a Stay Interview or the more involved, information-rich “Help me help you help us” Conversation, these conversations between managers and their direct reports enable managers to:

1. Identify and address potential sources of employee disenchantment before the employee decides to quit.
2. Understand what motivates each individual team member and explore with each how to satisfy their unique “employee engagement recipe.”
3. Learn from each employee what they are currently doing that isn’t helpful, what they are doing that works, and what they could be doing to be even more effective at bringing out the best in that employee.
4. Engage employees in conversations around their professional growth interests and collaborate to find opportunities to make these a reality (this is especially important with younger employees).
5. Communicate so that employees are willing to speak candidly and give honest feedback, so they will provide information necessary for these conversations to provide useful information.