How to Solve Your Turnover Problem with This ONE Principle

Is your company struggling to retain its workforce? Pretty expensive habit, but you’re not alone.

According to data from Harvard Business Review and the Corporate Leadership Council,

• 25% of top performers plan to leave their company within 12 months
• 50% of executives say their organizations are ineffective at managing and keeping top talent.
• 33% of “emerging stars” report feeling “disengaged” from their companies.
• 40% of “high potentials” have little confidence in senior management.

If you’re the business owner, C-level leader or HR Director who just got handed the gargantuan task of stopping the bleeding, there’s no magic pill. To turn the ship around, it will take a few seasons of culture change, a lot of conversations, assessments, and commitment. But trust me, it can be done.

To get the wheels in motion and reverse the curse, there’s ONE PRINCIPLE you NEED to consider applying:

Leaders and managers at any level MUST consider their employees as business partners.

When leaders engage their workforce in an entrepreneurial way, like making them feel as if they own a small business, good things begin to happen.

So, let’s make this as real as possible. You’re an executive setting an initiative for culture change, or maybe a department manager who feels like the lone ranger — your best people are packing for the competitor, and you know something’s got to change or your job is on the line. This entrepreneurial spirit of engaging and collaborating is not pie-in-the-sky stuff. It’s an attitude that you allow to filter down to the staff level so they can actively seek out change, rather than waiting for marching orders. You do this by:

• Granting them access to the big picture so they can think like an owner.
• Giving everyone a voice that needs to be nurtured, not criticized, in order to continue bringing innovative ideas forward. It is truly built around collaboration; the concept that no idea is a bad idea.
• Building a team of people who aren’t afraid to be in the driver’s seat and are equally happy to ride in the passenger’s seat when others take the lead.

Why be afraid to foster that culture within any company, big or small?

Sara Sutton Fell, CEO and founder of FlexJobs, expands on this crucial principle which she practices at her own company. Here’s how she put it:

“To me, an entrepreneurial spirit is
a way of approaching situations where you
feel empowered, motivated, and capable of
taking things into your own hands. Companies
that nurture an entrepreneurial spirit within
their organization encourage their employees
to not only see problems, solutions and
opportunities, but to come up with ideas
to do something about them.”

In fact, some of the largest organizations most definitely embrace an entrepreneurial spirit: Apple, Virgin, Google, Zappos to name a few.

Culture is a big component of employee retention for these companies. So what that means for your company is that leaders and employees must work together to foster a culture that enables ideas to flow from anywhere within the company. Letting people take their ideas and see them through is very empowering and motivating. Both are responsible for maintaining an entrepreneurial spirit as the company grows.

That’s the power of servant leadership.

In Part 2 of this post, I cover ten ways that ANY company,  big or small, can apply immediately to foster an entrepreneurial spirit. Go there now!

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At Leadership from the Core, our business is reversing leadership behaviors that lead to turnover and low morale! We do that through servant leadership. If this post struck a chord, subscribe below to receive a download link to a FREE 45-minute teleseminar….

The Top 5 Things Every Leader MUST DO to Keep Employees Happy and Motivated

You will find out….

• The Secrets to What Motivates Workers Across the Globe to Thrive and Perform.

• The Behaviors that Will Drive Your People to Willingly and Happily Scale mountains for You.

• The Actions That Consistently Inspire your People to Fully Commit Themselves in their Jobs.

These are simple behaviors that any manager at any level can start doing today.

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