This is the fifth in a five part series on achieving Employee Retention. The articles cover:
1. Competitive Compensation & Benefits
2. Sound Organizational Structure
3. Leadership & a Motivating Work Environment
4. Recognition & Rewards
5. Employee Empowerment, Personal Growth, & Dreams

The premise of the articles is that employee retention is not a program or product, but rather the result of effective organization and leadership practices.

Empowerment
Reduces customer turnover
Allows you to recover fast
Reduces undesired employee turnover
Increases profits

While customers would like your organization to provide perfect seamless service, they don't expect you to do so. However, they do expect you to fix any problems with no hassles and do so in a timely manner. Only an organization with empowered front line employees can meet these customer expectations.

Effective empowerment relies on accomplishing the four steps previously covered in building employee retention. In brief, these steps are:

1. Attracting and hiring talented people with competitive compensation and benefits
2. Establishing a sound organization structure in which all employees know and understand their organization's direction and values.
3. Providing leadership and a work environment that supports employees' growth and success, ensures that employees know why their job is important and what it is they are trying to accomplish, and have the appropriate training and tools to succeed.
4. Recognizing and rewarding people for their successes and correcting or, if necessary, replacing those who are not succeeding.

Attempting to introduce empowerment before you've accomplished these essential steps is a prescription for failure.

To error is human.
To empower your people to fix the error IMMEDIATELY is divine.

Empowered employees are able to provide hassle free and immediate fixes to most customer problems. Authorizing employees to make decisions also positively effects your employees. It says:

We trust you to make intelligent decisions.

We value your judgement.

Our research has consistently shown that being trusted and feeling valued are two of the most important factors in employee satisfaction and retention.

To some extent, you already empower your people because you can't be everywhere at once. What's happening within your organization right now .. . . as you're reading this sentence? When you're on a business trip? On vacation?

To gain the full benefit of empowering people takes a bit of reconditioning. People are used to asking permission and following orders. We spend our first twelve years in school raising our hands to ask permission and waiting for the bell to ring to tell us when to come and go. People naturally look to policy or delay while seeking approval before making a decision. Even as adults, we don't want to "get in trouble".

Consequently, to establish effective empowerment you have to clearly define the employees' areas of decision making authority. One suggestion is to start with a reasonably small area of authority and expand that area as your people gain comfort and confidence with making decisions. One obvious area is to authorize your staff to make decisions on issues in which they already know how you would decide.

It is essential to conduct ongoing meetings to support, encourage, and constantly expand the employees' area of authority.

The real test of empowerment comes when an employee makes a bad decision - - and it will happen. Treat it the same as when you make a bad decision. You don't fire yourself, publicly humiliate yourself, or take away your authority. You review the situation [gently] and figure out how to do it better the next time.

Another concern many managers express is empowering people to handle decisions involving money. Simply stated: "Won't they give away the farm?!?" My observation and experience suggest just the opposite to be true. People who earn $10 - $20 per hour tend to think in $1's and sometimes $10's. People earning over $50,000 tend to think in $100's. People earning over $100,000 tend to think in $1000's.

Front line people tend to think that 'giving' a customer a $5 refund is significant and hesitate in rebating $20 or more. $50,000+ employees are comfortable refunding up to $100. Top executives are used to making major financial decisions. $1000 seems like a small amount to them.

There will always be exceptions to these generalizations. However, when front line people handle a customer problem involving money, they usually give back far less money than a manager or executive would. Consequently, empowerment strengthens customer retention by reducing customer hassles and speeding recovery time, while at the same time costing your organization less money.

The primary increase in profits will result from retaining customers by fulfilling their expectations smoothly and rapidly. Secondary profit increases will result from reduced employee turnover and less expensive decisions.

Personal Growth & Dreams
At the top of the employee retention peak is:

Providing personal growth opportunities
Learning employees' passions, personal goals, aims, and desires
Helping employees' fulfill their dreams
Many managers and executives fear that if they train and develop their people, these same people will leave for better jobs. Some will. However, by following this "bare foot in the winter and pregnant in the summer" philosophy they limit the same resources that their organization depends upon for its success.

You're only as good as your people.
Retention studies have found that personal growth and development is an employee satisfier and important retention factor.

Personal growth and development starts with job skills training. It also includes:

Customer communications skills training.
Inclusion in identifying, developing, and implementing opportunities of improving the work environment, processes, and procedures.
Overseeing your operation while you are on vacation or traveling
Representing the department at meetings
Hosting visiting clients
Opportunities to participate and lead special projects
And, of course, empowerment to make customer service decisions.
These opportunities for personal growth need to be tied to each individual's personal goals, aims, and dreams. Doing this requires that you first learn each individual's goals, aims, and dreams. The primary means of attaining this information is to ASK.

Ask during their initial interview
Ask during orientation
Ask at the end of their probation period
Ask as you set up the criteria and schedule for their individual performance review
Ask before, during, or after your weekly staff meeting
Ask while you are having lunch with each individual
Ask as part of the employee satisfaction survey you conduct
Ask as part of the individual's performance review
Keep asking on a continuous basis. These are constantly changing personal issues. Record their answers and refer to your notes when appropriate opportunities occur.

In today's marketplace, people don't want to be treated like a commodity. They want to know that someone cares about their dreams.

Rust Rueff, senior VP of HR, Electronic Arts

It pays to become the employer of choice
National average turnover for 1st year employees is 21 percent. "Good" companies average turnover is 6 percent. Remember, the real cost of employee turnover is not replacing the employee, but replacing customers lost by poor service from inexperienced employees. You do the math.

Good companies are typically those organizations that are consistently using all five of the Magic of Employee Retention steps and constantly auditing each step for potential improvements. In so doing, they become the employer of choice in their industry.

Winning organizations know that employee retention is not some after market tag on program of the year. They approach employee retention as a manifestation of the organization's values, commitments, and practices. They recognize the cost of employee turnover starts with employee replacement costs and ends with the far, far more expensive customer replacement costs. Winning organizations value their employees and treat them accordingly. They recognize that they'll never win the 'Super Bowl' with rookies.