My biggest all-star employee just left the company to work for a competitor. He was efficient, virtually mistake-free and energetic. When he left, he took with him a bunch of unwritten knowledge about how he did his job. I now have a couple of people that are similar in background and knowledge, but they just can’t match what this person was able to do. Besides working on my employee retention, how can I get access to the hidden or tribal knowledge that people like this all-star have? What is a way that I can document the habits that separate all-stars from bench warmers?
- Missing My All-Star, Maryland Heights Business Owner
Tap Into Unwritten Knowledge
Working on retention is one way to prevent the damage; a more successful approach is to create a group of all-stars so one person isn’t the only employee capable of high performance.
There are two factors to performance: knowledge and behaviors (habits). You will need to address each of these aspects of performance separately to achieve your goal of building a group of all-stars.
Tapping into ‘unwritten knowledge’ is best achieved by cross-training and/or mentoring. I don’t know enough about your situation to recommend a best approach, but you can ask others to ‘shadow’ the all-star, have him teach quick ‘tips and tricks’ workshops, give him a project of documenting ‘best practices’ and other strategies for sharing information. Asking him to take on this extra work also serves as a way of recognizing his skill and providing him the opportunity to develop leadership skills. By the way, offering development opportunities is a great retention technique.
The key thing that struck me was your description of the behaviors you valued— efficient, mistake-free and energetic. These are obviously traits you would like all of your employees to have and there are probably more. One way to document these traits is to take the time to write a detailed ‘behavioral’ description of what a great employee is doing when they do a great job. You already have a start—they are detail oriented, quality minded, results oriented – what else are you looking for? Once you know what you want, it becomes easier to coach existing employees on their performance and target these types of behaviors when you’re hiring.
Marvis Meyers, Vice-President, Training and Organization Development, AAIM
Provide Opportunities, Share Power
Workers are better informed than ever and sense a shift towards greater collaboration, mutual respect and democratic equality, and they want this at work. Added to this is the fact that they desire four things as much or more than good pay. Each employee wants to feel powerful, appreciated, connected and contributing. These four core social needs are often not understood fully by owners and therefore inadvertently, they are not met well.
I remember a company I consulted with that did a great job helping its 60 employees feel appreciated and connected (lots of team building and acknowledgement). Where the company fell down was that after inviting feedback (especially from their all-stars), it didn’t share power or provide opportunities for each to try their new ideas.
When you are successful in creating true community and meet the four core needs, you will find that people stay or, when they go, they leave supporting your increased success. I challenge you to see the loss of your all-star as the wake up call to create a workplace where every person becomes an all-star. This will sustain you through growth and change. Best of luck!
Judy Ryan, Owner, Expanding Human Potential