How To Retain Employees Without Money and Communicate Effectively

Employee Retention – How well do you know your team?

Often, we overlook our greatest assets: our employees. Learning how to retain employees without money involves recognizing that our employees are the ones who make stuff happen in our businesses and make the company money. As leaders, it’s our duty to ensure they are fully connected to the company culture, mission, vision & values to carry out the organization’s goals. If someone feels strongly connected to the Mission, Vision, and Values (MVV) of the organization and feels like they are part of moving the needle forward, they often will stay, even when someone comes along and offers them more money. People rarely chase money; they want a purpose and need to be connected to that purpose.

To support this, one of the most effective strategies to retain employees without money is ensuring your team members feel valued and integrated into the company’s larger vision through regular 1-on-1 interactions. When I say regular, I mean no less than quarterly; however, they don’t have to be formal. They can be for a cup of coffee, out back the shop, on a job site, lunch, or anywhere that feels comfortable. Communicating with employees this way should not be a chore or a task; make it natural and part of your routine. Ensure everyone in your company knows you want to give each of them some one-on-one time at a minimum quarterly; they will undoubtedly appreciate the time.

These 1-on-1 Syncs should be in person where you…

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… listen intently to understand, not just to respond. Get good at asking questions, drill down into the conversation, peel the onion back, and truly listen empathically. It may be about work, personal life, or even someone else’s problems; just be there in the moment, listen, and care.

As leaders, we tend to want to fix everything and can be inclined to listen ‘with the intent to respond,’ wanting to offer advice right away. However, this approach is not ideal. This is how to motivate and retain employees—by allowing them to arrive at their own solutions through guided discovery. The most effective way to do this is by learning to ask enough questions that lead them to come up with solutions on their own.

They may even come to the exact same solutions you wanted to share an hour ago, and you may even think, I should have just told them that an hour ago. 🙂 However, if it’s their idea, it is more likely it will stick, which is a subtle but effective strategy to retain employees without money. You don’t want them to come to you for all the answers; you want them to learn to think on their own and feel they can come up with a viable solution — this autonomy is key to motivating and retaining employees. And a bonus, that hour you spend asking questions, peeling back the onion, and building a relationship with them is likely one of the most valuable hours you have ever spent with that employee.

Communicating with Employees Effectively

Effective communication is one of the key ways to retain employees, and it starts with the right conversation starters. If you struggle with conversation starters, you can always ask how life is treating them, how is the wife, significant other, kiddos, family, sports, etc. On the work side, make sure you’re asking questions that help you understand how things are going in the business —communicating with employees effectively about their perspectives. Some questions might be:

What do you think we are doing well at work? What should we be doing more of that I may be missing out on?

What’s not working well? What challenges or pain points do you see in your job, your department, and other departments, or do you see anyone else seemingly frustrated with their job?

If this were your company, what changes would you recommend? Good follow-up questions to their answers would be: Why do you see those changes as important, and how do you see them positively affecting the company and/or the bottom line? Or how would you go about implementing such changes, and are there any fallouts to the changes we haven’t thought about?

Communication is key to any relationship and especially important to your teams. If they know they matter, their work matters, and they are striving for something bigger than them (BHAG) and how they fit into the puzzle (how their daily work contributes to the bigger picture), it’s a lot harder for someone to poach from you. This is the essence of how to retain employees without money.

In closing, and in all fairness, I never said I was great at this myself. 🙂 After selling my business and looking back, I wish I had taken more of my advice on how to motivate and retain employees outlined above. My hope and goal is some of you will take these steps, and it helps improve your business.

Until next time…keep on keeping on in a positive way…

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LOTS MORE Tools, Tips, and Tricks to come. I’m truly excited to give back to the elevator industry, which has been so great to me and my family.

Thanks for reading, and until next time, here is to your success as we continue “Empowering Entrepreneurs”!