Emotional Intelligence - A Strategy for Building Bench Strength

Have you considered the possibility that your company might be harboring a virus that could be negatively impacting your company's bottom line to the tune of millions of dollars annually? Like a stealth virus, negative emotions can drain organizational resources - both financial and human. And if you have not taken the precaution to create a positive emotional climate by helping people develop their emotional intelligence skills, high turnover can be contagious. Implementation of an emotionally intelligent retention strategy is the key to preventing an outbreak of this virus. One-time programs or traditional incentives will not work and it will require more than a fair compensation package.

The High Cost of Turnover

Countless articles and books have been written about the direct and indirect costs of turnover. The cost of replacing a worker whose skills are in high demand can hit up to 1.5 times his annual salary. At minimum, the cost to replace any worker is about 20 percent of his annual salary.

It's difficult to track the indirect costs of high turnover which can be staggering. For example, if a supervisor is spending even part of his day conducting exit interviews, interviewing candidates, or posting jobs on the web, that's time away from doing his regular work. That's costly. To add to that, unhappy employees may leave only after causing immeasurable damage to relationships with clients, leading to lost customers as a result of subtle sabotage. And now the company must spend extra time and money trying to woo those customers back.

What Do Workers Really Want?

As companies compete for talent, many HR professionals say that figuring out what employees want becomes a critical factor for retaining employees. They suggest customizing job descriptions and perks for each worker so that they will say, "No thanks," when recruiters call them. Figuring out what perks each individual employee wants from job time sharing to on-the-job child care can be daunting. Also, it's the wrong place to start. Attempting to indulge the unique wants and needs of every employee creates plenty of stress for supervisors, managers and human resource professionals and can be overwhelming. And even if you give workers what you think they want, they may bail on you anyway. Underneath it all, employees want the same thing.

Every employee, whether he or she is able to put it into words or not, wants to feel certain things:

- They want to feel secure (if they perform well, they will keep their job).

- They want to feel appreciated for their contributions.

- They want to feel that their immediate boss cares about them as a person.

- They want to feel fulfilled in the work they do.

Creating a positive emotional environment becomes the solid foundation upon which to build a successful employee retention strategy - creating, through the behaviors of every manager and supervisor, an emotional climate that makes people want to work at your company. They want an emotionally intelligent employer, and in particular, an emotionally intelligent leader to guide them.

A positive emotional climate is not one in which everyone always pretends to be happy and problems are ignored, nor is it one where there are no conflicts or stresses. But it is one that when problems arise, they are dealt with in a fair and respectful way, a way that allows people to disagree and still demonstrate sincere care for one another.

Sounds great, right? But just how do you create a positive emotional climate that increases employee satisfaction and employee loyalty, which leads to better retention?

Where Do You Start?

Start at the top. The top leaders' attitudes and behaviors directly affect employee satisfaction, productivity and loyalty. These, in turn, directly affect customer satisfaction, loyalty and profitability. Employee satisfaction is directly driven by how employees are treated, first by their immediate boss, and second by other leaders in the organization. And job satisfaction is about attitudes and emotions - how employees feel.

OK, so I'm a supervisor or manager or executive. And I'm supposed to behave in a way that's caring and positive toward my people. Does this mean I'm supposed to be immune to the stress and pressure of leading? No!

You have feelings and emotions, too! So what should you do? You should enhance what is known as your Emotional Intelligence (EI) skills. EI is your ability to acquire and apply knowledge from your emotions and the emotions of others to help you make decisions about what to say or do (or not say or do). As you develop EI skills, you will progressively enhance skills in the five basic EI competencies: emotional self-awareness, emotional self-regulation, emotional self-motivation, empathy and nurturing relationships.

These competencies, when developed and practiced, can safeguard an individual and an organization against the virus of negative emotions that can cause dissatisfaction and turnover. They can help an organization retain its most valuable resource - its people!