Interview Series: Dick Finnegan, author and Founder of C-Suite Analytics on the impact of remote work on retention

I had the pleasure of interviewing Dick Finnegan, Founder of C-Suite Analytics and highly esteemed author of The Power of Stay Interviews for Engagement and Retention  for our Expert Interview Series.  Dick shared his insights on how Supervisors and Managers will need to upskill – that the ability to hone their skills to probe and question and listen to their teams, will be more important than ever to effectively manage remotely.

You can watch the interview here

Or read a transcript of our discussion below. I’ve bolded the sections which are particularly useful to make for a speedier read.

HW:

What are your predictions for the next 12 months in terms of the job market. What do you expect to see as a result of covid and its economic impact in terms of recruitment and retention?

DF:

Sure. Well, Heidi first thanks for having me and I bet my hair is and I have less than when you first met 10 years ago. You know who knows who has an accurate crystal ball, right? But I have some data to share that I find way beyond interesting fascinating and here’s the data: In the most recent data from the bureau of labor statistics which is the most respected employment data sources the government’s data source. What I looked at was how are employee openings employee hires and employee voluntary quits different than a year ago. All right; now, we know that unemployment suddenly leaped to three times where it had been from 3.5 to 11 point something. Now, it’s somewhere between two and three times as much as where it had been before the pandemic and we know that there’s various numbers, 30 million people are unemployed. So, we know that the economy has just crashed. So, I was interested in these numbers and I consult this data source a lot because I thought they would just reflect the havoc. But here’s what they said, the percent of job openings in the most recent measure compared to a year ago is down just nine percent. The percent of hires is down just three percent and a percent of voluntary quits not layoffs, not people getting fired but voluntary quits is down just 18 and Heidi, I would have thought voluntary quits were down by half. I would have thought who is possibly leaving their jobs because you’re so pleased to have a job.

Yeah. Now, maybe if you take a job with instacart which is hiring everybody they can find and you decide you don’t like being in grocery stores you’re going to quit but how many people are leaving established jobs professional jobs and the data goes on to tell us a lot like 82 percent as much as a year ago and I could go into detail on the companies that are contacting us because we have companies contingent attack contacting us that say, nothing’s different or maybe in April and may turnover went down but it’s right back up and these are companies manufacturing. These are companies and call centers. These are companies in healthcare. These are especially companies in food processing. Those are the ones who are saying to us, nothing’s different. Pandemic, what’s the pandemic? So, to look out 12 months is not only difficult to do but I’m shocked at the data now compared to the last two months. So, I don’t see any reason why the same trends will not continue that openings will be down compared to pre-panic tires will be down, quits will be down but not nearly as much as we think. There’s a lot of job-changing action out there.

HW:

Okay, and all that job-changing action that the ability to now work remotely I mean you know where companies were perhaps previously restricting themselves to people within a geographic locality to themselves…do you think those companies that aren’t necessarily planning to go 100 % remote that are just you know navigating the crisis? Do you think they’re changing their recruitment policies to allow them to cast a wider net or do you think they’re assuming that they’ll come back in person into an office and therefore that isn’t changing much at the moment?

DF:

I think you can only change your recruiting processes in terms of hiring people who are dispersed geographically. If your CEO has declared, we’re working from home for good and I think a lot of companies just don’t know and I think they don’t know for a lot of reasons but the premier reason is because working from home was imposed on them. These companies didn’t make a healthy decision. They just said, oh my god we got to do it and so, you still have people working from home who are sharing the dining room table with their kids who can’t go to school or their partner who’s working from home. So, I think a lot of it’s up in the air.

HW:

And that’s an important point actually; we wrote a blog on that last week that the current working from home you know I mean this mass exodus mass transition has been a fascinating experiment in some ways in remote work. But it’s also a false one in that this isn’t true remote working this isn’t what it looks like. If you chose to work remotely the companies that were doing that 100%, weren’t doing it like this. They weren’t doing it where they couldn’t still come together for client meetings and for site visits and for conferences and networking and social stuff. You know this is a very different version of working from home than the one that the advocates of remote working have been have been looking for. So, it’s kind of interesting you know it’s forced us all in this direction but it’s giving us a slightly inauthentic taste of what it could be like in some ways.

DF:

Okay and you know in researching for this most recent book, you look for patterns in data that can draw you to a conclusion but there are so many conflicting patterns. There was a study done by a major global commercial real estate firm, their 10-year plan and they said, we don’t think things are going to be any different. We think we’re going to rent just as much office space. Then you have another study that says, the office space that is rented will not be down as much as you think because you’re going to need more square feet for employee because of social distancing. Then there’s other studies that says, I think it was ford is building a pickup truck where you can literally work from the truck. So, you’ve got all these trends going on of companies investing millions of dollars based on their studies and their studies contradict. So, who knows?

HW:

Who knows? What do you think are the key challenges for businesses that are used to being together? You know being able to have in-office in-person interactions once they transition to remote?

DF:

Yeah. No chit-chat. And by no chit-chat, I mean you’re not going to stop in the hall to say, how’s little Johnny’s knee, he hurt in little league? I mean you’re not going to stop and hall and say, hey, about that meeting last week, I had this idea. What do you think about this? It’s no chitchat and I think it’s going to take just a whole new rethinking on how supervisors and I’m going to use that term because it usually means the first level of management are going to connect with their people beyond job performance things. It’s just going to be so easy to fall into a trap of having a weekly call to say, did you do this? Did you do that? Did you do this? Did you do that? And you know there’s going to be some superficial chit chat. Hey, how you doing? Hey, how’s it working from home? But it’s going to take a dedicated process of training supervisors on how to build trust and take the time to do it. Where, when you say, hey, how’s working from home to get a real answer? So, it’s sort of like lack of connecting dots on innovation and culture and ideas but also just straight out relationship building to where you can build trust with your teams and Heidi as you know from our past conversations, everything about employer retention and engagement is about supervisors building trust with their teams one-on-one everything.

HW:

Yeah. Okay, and which brings me very neatly, actually to the next question, how do you build that trust and report when you’re managing remotely particularly? I mean you know, there will be people that are starting a new job, having never come into the office? So, having been on board remotely and starting remotely having never met the people they’re working with. How are teams building that trust? What needs to happen to make that work?

DF:

Well. You know my antenna just pops up on that question in this way that you mentioned this book that I wrote the power of stay interviews and I really took an idea or two I had read about and formed it into a book which became the top selling book. I think as you said in the history for sure the global society of human resources management and as we continue to perfect that idea and work with hundreds of clients to do stay interviews to improve engagement and retention. What we find is with remote workers, you had better be able to ask really good questions about them. Like, hey, what things do you look forward to when you commute to work which is the first question that we use even if community means going down the hall or what are you learning here? What do you want to learn? Why do you stay here? When’s the last time you thought about leaving what prompted what can I do to be a better boss for you? And you better be not just asking questions but being skilled in listening and probing to learn more in taking notes. So, you remember but probing is such a critical skill because that’s how you know somebody really cares about what you said, when you ask more questions about it and they want deeper understanding of it. So, stay interviews are a great solution for building those relationships with remote workers and new remote workers. But it’s not just go ask questions. It builds skills to go along with the questions and practice and apply those skills.

HW:

And learning to do it by video conferencing I mean that’s always a skill in itself isn’t it because that that bit where we’re not in the same room as each other. Asking those questions, you sometimes just get the answer you’re supposed to give as opposed to a genuine connection.

DF:

Right. Absolutely.

HW:

It’s going to be a lot of new skills needing to be learned for people to be able to do that effectively. What about culture? We conducted a white paper recently. We interviewed 500 CEOs and culture came up as the top concern for CEOs in terms of you know people not coming into the office. There’s that sense that an office represents the company in lots of different ways in terms of the environment that’s being created and without that in place, how does a business perpetuate its culture remotely do you think? What’s the kind of secret sauce for doing that?

DF:

You know, I’d love to go back to everyone who was surveyed and say, what do you mean by culture anyhow? Because I can think of few words in business that are used as much for which there’s no common definition. It’s just a fluky thing you know when we say culture. And in fact I remember reading a detailed article that said of the nine or so primary culture categories. The one that CEOs chose is the one they use most is money and I can’t might have said performance so, some other words that make money. So, when I think of culture. I think back to these studies by Gallup that said, every supervisor sets his around her own culture that it’s so hard to say at the top you know you can go into the boardroom with fancy charts that say here’s our culture plan but the supervisor’s on board in the same way. If you can’t do that you’re not going to get culture down. So, I’m not even sure what it is and I’m not sure companies know what it is but I do know supervisors are going to drive it. That’s what I know. So, it gets back again to what is it that you better be telling them, what are the important values and here’s the way we’re going to behave to make those values happen not put a sun on the wall. So, here are the behaviors that drive culture and I want you to do those behaviors and reinforce those behaviors and expect those behaviors in your team. If you can’t connect your culture to behaviors, you’re not going to win.

HW:

Yeah. That makes sense. That makes so much sense. Yeah. Okay, the stay interview we’ve talked a little bit about the stay interview. How does it change when being used remotely? When we’re on a Tele conference like this? How can you create that connection with people so, that the questions you’re asking are getting all those answers, do you think?

DF:

Yep. It’s going to be better. The second time and even better the third time and better the fourth time you do it and it’s going to require that you use the skills I referenced earlier. You’re asking questions, you’re probing, you’re listening, you’re taking notes, you’re probing some more and you’re probing some more but your employee needs to walk away from that virtual meeting and say, my boss really cares about me. My boss really listened to me. My boss really asked follow-up questions to understand more. My boss wasn’t defensive at all. My boss, I could tell my boss was taking notes based on how she would come back to something I had said five minutes earlier? I feel like somebody cares about me out there and solutions to whatever that content was are not as important as believing somebody cares about me but as we train people with stay interviews when somebody says, so let’s pick something that is that is common and big and complex. We need more staff. We just need more staff. We can get our work done. The knee-jerk reaction is we don’t have a budget for more staff. You ain’t get any more stuff. But when you’re trained to say gosh, get it. You are working your head off and let’s talk about some of these things that might be getting in the way. You know do you have is everybody in our team performing well? Is the work designed well? Are there things that you’re doing that maybe you don’t have to do? Is there another department that should be doing some of these things? Is this a trend just now that the work is at a peak or have you seen it building over time? So, there are many ways to learn more about we need more staff that are about productivity through which at the end of such a discussion. I would say to you if I was doing the statement Heidi gosh, I totally get why this frustrates you you’ve given me a lot of really good information I have four pages of notes. Let me think about this. Let me get up in the morning when my mind is fresh look at my notes. Let me maybe talk to other managers, other people on the team maybe HR depending on the issue. Can I come back to you next Tuesday at two o’clock and I’ll tell you some things I think we can do to make this better and you will find ways to make it better. You will not find ways to make it perfect but you will find ways to make it better. And that combination of listening and caring and solving is what we need.

HW:

And so simple, really, I mean it. You know, it’s kind of its basic connecting and communicating but it’s yeah, that sounds so powerful to be getting that right now. I think it’s so many people I know who’ve worked in situations with managers and it’s not worked out. Well, that’s absolutely what’s missing that ability to feel heard and listened to and, you know, that change is possible.

DF:

And Heidi, I would add this that we work around the world and organizations around the world are totally romanced by engagement surveys and exit services. I could take each of them and tell you what’s good about them and bad about them. But here’s the headline. The headline is survey data gives you patterns of what people want, all right? We don’t get enough recognition. We don’t get enough communication. We need career development. And what happens in organizations it doesn’t matter what country you’re in. It’s all the same. That the results come in from the survey and CEOs, sit at the table with HR and others HR says, I got it. We can solve recognition of employee of the month employee of the year employee appreciation week. You get a backpack in five years and a logo. Company clock in 10 years and we got it. For communication, we’ll have town hall meetings. We’ll have more newsletters electronic newsletters will put up information to company internet, got it. Career development with career ladders with career day every department gets a table in the cafeteria talk about their jobs over Brian bank luncheon series with a speaker from the community college, got it. Nobody cares. I mean nobody cares. Gallup has proven for 20 years engagement hasn’t changed in our country in the U.S and the U.S and Canada lead the world. A third of workers engaged two-thirds or not deloitte has proved that U.S companies spend 1.53 billion dollars a year to improve engagement and it never changes because they just keep doing surveys and doing one-size-fits-all programs. People don’t stay or lead or engage or disengage for any one-size-fits-all program. If you want to know what employees think, eavesdrop when they go home and are having dinner and somebody says, how’s your day dear? And nobody says, my day was okay, but I wish we had pet insurance.

It’s my favorite one to pick on. They just don’t care they’re going to talk about their boss. Their colleagues and their duties, that’s what they’re going to talk about and if you can’t get in that boss of box colleagues and duties individually with employees. You can’t solve it that’s why engagement hasn’t changed in 20 years. You can’t solve it. Stay interviews get you in the box engagement surveys exit surveys will never get you involved. I mean when’s the last time you heard a really good worker say, my boss treats me like dirt but I’m holding on for employee appreciation week get a balloon (Both laughing) for three years from now. I’ll get that clock. I mean.

HW:

It’s the pen that everyone covets!

DF:

Right. These are not the things that make employees stay and work harder. It’s that relationship with their boss.

HW:

Yeah. That makes sense. I mean maybe there’s something in some instances not always but maybe there’s sometimes examples in which remote intensifies that relationship because it has to be more thoughtful or deliberate you know when you’re busy, when you’re in the office and you’re busy and they are too. Everyone’s going about their work. The bit where they’re going to have to make time to have dedicated one-on-one interviews and conversations in a thoughtful and targeted way because there’s nothing that’s kind of feeding that otherwise. So, I don’t know whether for some companies, they might actually find it becomes more thoughtful with remote because it has to be, I don’t know.

DF:

It has to be and as I said earlier, it’s not going to work as well the first time you do a stay interview. Virtually is it well the second time and the third time. Because then they’re going to get it that you care. You’re listening. You’re going to come back. You’re going to have ideas.

HW:

What’s the frequency recommendation for your say interviews?

DF:

Yeah. Great question! Our clients set two retention goals. One for all turnover and one for new higher turnover and so, we recommend two stay interviews in the new higher goal period. Whatever, that period should be and at least once a year. Otherwise some clients do them more often.

HW:

Yeah. And I can see a benefit to doing them often certainly. Okay. So, we should wrap that but I’m just wondering I don’t know whether we’ve covered everything but my final question is what do you see is the fundamentals in effective remote working? What’s got to be front and central for the organization to work remotely effectively do you think?

DF:

Yeah. Supervisors, now I use that term because I think usually demotes the first line leaders who manage most of the people. Supervisors better be trained and skilled on how to get to the non-performance issues. The non-metric driven performance issues. Things like employee well-being how are you but say it in a way that it’s not a greeting. You know most people say how are you and it’s a greeting but how are you, probes questions. How’s your work life balanced? How are things in your life? Tell me about relationships with employees? Who do you like working with? Who do you not like working with? Tell me about; are you pleased with your work in your work situation? How do we connect the dots on creativity and innovation where we usually need other people? Are there other people, we should be scheduling a meeting with our virtual meeting who we need to create better ideas? So, be attuned to those things be because if you don’t, it’s just going to become a checklist of did you do what you said, you would do. Let’s look at the numbers.

HW:

Brilliant. Thank you so much for your time today, Dick. We really appreciate talking with us through and just getting a bit deeper into some of the issues and challenges around remote working and we look forward to continuing to work with you on this some more. I’m just going to.

DF:

Thank you, Heidi. I love working with you. Take care.