For the last 11 years, the cornerstone of Consulting magazine has been its annual Best Firms to Work For ranking—the profession's largest independent employee satisfaction survey. In addition to ranking the top employers of choice, countless firms have come to rely on custom cuts of the data to help identify where they have weaknesses in employee engagement and therefore are vulnerable to staff defections.
While the candid feedback our surveys can provide is valuable, firm leaders have asked us for more. Specifically, they've wanted help fixing the problems we've helped them recognize. As a result, we've recently taken a significant step to better meet our subscribers' needs. Consulting magazine is proud to announce a new partnership with C-Suite Analytics, the nation's leading staff retention advisory firm. C-Suite's founder and CEO, noted retention expert Dick Finnegan, is leading the newly created Consulting magazine's Retention Advisors practice and will contributing regularly to the magazine.
For the last several decades, his advice has helped companies reduce turnover by an average of 20 percent, and sustain that lower rate for years. His company has helped companies retain thousands of employees by focusing efforts on data-driven solutions that start at the top and are implemented through a three step-program:
- Quantifying the dollar cost of turnover and disengagement, down to the first-line leader;
- Establishing goals and accountabilities for improvement;
- Providing a complete review of all people-management processes and implementing proprietary tools to drive these critical metrics.
The key to Finnegan's staff retention model is that he treats it like sales or any other important strategic initiative. And each of those initiatives begins with goals and accountabilities that are associated with costs in dollars, not in turnover percents.
Specifically, his model helps firms:
- Measure and report monthly to the CEO/Managing Partner on each manager's staff turnover performance versus goals and the related costs/savings. Continual measurement can be tied to annual bonuses to hold managers accountable. In addition, his process also helps to identify which managers may need additional training on mentoring and other people skills.
- Establish trust skills training for all managers and solicit one-on-one feedback from their teams. Trust is a learned skill. And, for staff retention, it can be a make or break attribute of a manager.
- Assist managers to conduct effective "Stay Interviews" to overcome exit and engagement survey shortcomings. As David Maister often shared about his courtship with his wife, the key isn't knowing what women want, but what that one particular woman wants.
- Review and re-build hiring processes with management and HR to better attract those who are more likely to be interested in long-term careers with your firm.
- And, enhance your firm's onboarding efforts to make the best possible first impression with all new staff.
C-Suite's work is based on Finnegan's groundbreaking book, Rethinking Retention in Good Times and Bad, which BusinessWeek said "offers fresh thinking for solving the turnover problem in any economy."
Finnegan's leadership team also includes Sherri Merbach, a CPA and MBA who began her career with a Big Four accounting firm and rose through the ranks of Disney's noted HR team, and Ernie Hinderliter, a former Merrill Lynch executive.
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