The senior management team at your company needs to be comprised of leaders who can take the initiative and establish policies and procedures for the workplace. They’re the face of the business, the team that sets the tone for the organisation. But what role does the senior management team play when it comes to staff retention?
Building Culture
The senior management team is crucial when it comes to building and maintaining a positive workplace culture- and ensuring it’s somewhere that the top talent not only wants to work but wants to stay, too.
Senior managers should make sure that the company values are represented and upheld at all levels throughout the business. They should have strong strategies for implementing company goals that encourage growth. They should also be positively impacting employees, both through spoken and unspoken behaviours, social interactions and mindset. They should be a team that employees look up to, and aspire to join.
Employees need to feel confident that their leaders have their back and will make the best day-to-day decisions, that support them and enable them to do their jobs well. The best staff will stay at a company that is led by the best, and most supportive, managers.
Building Trust with Continuity of Leadership
Developing and nurturing the next senior management team should always be a priority. Businesses need to be able to show continuity of leadership within their organisation, to reinforce positive messages about employees’ own career prospects.
But thanks to the ‘Great Resignation’, there are now fewer candidates applying for senior management positions. DDI’s 2021 Global Leadership Forecast found that 77% of organisations are currently experiencing a ‘leadership gap’, and this gap is expected to grow following recent shifts in the way we’re working as a whole. Employees are turning their backs on senior management positions, and the pressure is mounting on those that are left behind.
On top of this, recent reports state that trust is at an all-time low:
• Gartner’s recent research shows that 41% of post-pandemic employees have lower trust in their teams, and 37% have lower trust in their leadership teams specifically.
• Reports from Accenture state that just one in six employees now feel a connection to their colleagues.
• The 2022 Edelman trust Barometer also shows alarming results, with distrust now classed as society’s default emotion, thanks to the failure of leadership.
In addition, Deloitte’s report which looked into senior management’s impact on employee well-being found that most leaders regularly underestimate how much their staff are struggling at work- highlighting once more the disconnect between management and their employees.
The report also found that just 56% of employees felt their senior management team cared about their well-being, in contrast to 91% of senior managers who believed their staff knew they cared.
It's clear that communication is being lost somewhere, and it's time to bring it back; now is the time to turn this around. Staff retention might be falling to the Great Resignation, or it might be down to the so-called ‘Quiet Resignation’. Either way, it's a problem that needs addressing and working on culture, confidence and continuity now needs to be your focus.
Get in touch today to find out how we can help you with this, so that you can rebuild and restore your organisation, with a a strong senior management team ready to train the next generation.
