Retaining employees is a long-standing challenge for senior living organizations. Although exit interviews with departing staff members can reveal changes that managers can make to potentially entice more employees to stay in the future, a recent Harvard Business Review article shares other actions that could prevent companies from losing workers in the first place, before things get to the exit interview stage.
“Countless clients have told me they wished their employer had asked them questions to encourage their growth before they resigned,” writes Susan Peppercorn, an executive career transition coach, author and speaker. “They wanted these questions to come from their manager proactively, rather than retroactively from HR.”
Five important questions managers can ask their direct reports — and not just at annual review time, she says, are:
1. How would you like to grow within this organization?
2. Do you feel a sense of purpose in your job?
3. What do you need from me to do your best work?
4. What are we currently not doing as a company that you feel we should do?
5. Do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day?
Managers who regularly ask these questions of their direct reports help those individuals feel like they are “seen and valued,” Peppercorn writes. And workers who feel this way, she adds, are more likely to “become advocates for the department and organization, no matter how long they stay.”
Read the whole article on the publication’s website.
Lois A. Bowers is the editor of McKnight’s Senior Living.
