We are in the last month of 2024 and now is the time to look very carefully at your company’s employees, aiming to provide individualized feedback and – mainly fair – for each of them, as well as to understand how people’s work is impacting the organization overall, whether that impact is positive or even negative.
The truth is that the end of the year usually brings that feeling of tiredness and wanting it to end soon. However, you as a manager, need to make sure that your team members do not feel discouraged, on the contrary. This is a time when employees need to be satisfied with the job they have, which will be the result of work that should have been done over the months.
And why am I saying this? People may start thinking about closing cycles just in December, so that they start a new stage in the next year, considering the guaranteed bonus. And that includes resigning from their current jobs to accept new opportunities that are more interesting or that have caught their attention, for more attractive functions or a higher and better salary.
The fact is that to harvest, you have to sow. In these cases, it is very important for the leader to have done work over the months to captivate the team, making people not want to leave, especially in a festive and closing moment, where employees of most companies usually celebrate the achievements of the year and create goals to be achieved in the future.
For this reason, it is essential to know what the team members’ pain points are so that it is possible to eventually address them and thus be able to retain talents, which certainly make the difference in the overall performance of the company. No one is irreplaceable, but it is good to know that we can count on competent people who are dedicated to delivering the best performances daily.
A premise of OKRs – Objectives and Key Results – is precisely linked to the importance of the team for achieving results, and the tool can help leaders realize what needs to be done to provide conditions for employees to want to stay in the company and be satisfied. And this ranges from a healthy work environment to increasing benefits, for example.
Not always a high salary will ‘trap’ a person in a job, as there are other issues that influence the decision to stay or leave. A survey by the consultancy GPTW – Great Place To Work – listed the 5 factors that motivate employees to stay in companies, and salary is not the first: 1st Growth opportunity; 2nd Quality of life; 3rd Compensation and benefits; 4th Alignment of values; 5th Stability.
In this scenario, it is essential for the manager to understand that it is necessary to build a process every day where team members will want to remain in the company, not for lack of alternatives, but because they really want to be there. And that is the difference to retain talents and at the same time have employees who are really happy with the position they hold.
When the full potential offered by OKRs is used well, the leader engages the team in defining priorities and gives them autonomy to work. Believe me, these two points are fundamental for greater engagement of employees, which will lead to better results.
