Piece keeping

This month, we highlight the roofing industry’s participation in SkillsUSA,® which helps draw young adults into the industry (see “The future of roofing”). While reading it, I realized how important it is to keep recruits engaged and invested in their new roofing careers.

In Harvard Business Review’s article “5 Questions Every Manager Needs to Ask Their Direct Reports,” author Susan Peppercorn explains the crucial information supervisors must receive from their teams regularly to keep all their team pieces intact.

She writes: “In a recent Gallup study, more than half of employees surveyed said that no one—including their manager—had talked to them about how they were feeling in their role in their last three months before they quit.”

To help prevent this from happening, Peppercorn says team leaders routinely should ask employees the following questions:

1. How would you like to grow within this organization?
2. Do you feel a sense of purpose in your job?
3. What do you need from me to do your best work?
4. What are we currently not doing as a company that you feel we should do?
5. Do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day?

In another Harvard Business Review article, “As Power Shifts Back to Employers, They Need to Avoid 3 Pitfalls,” authors Ron Carucci and Jarrod Shappell share things employers need to avoid doing to realize increases in employee retention. They say employers need to stop:

• Micromanaging, surveilling and rigidly controlling employees
• Neglecting employee well-being
• Having a replaceable-worker mindset

“The companies that treat employees as disposable always end up in panic-hiring cycles when talent shortages return,” say Carucci and Shappell.

As you begin to add new employees to your team (and continue to nurture current employees), keeping these retention tips in mind could help you build a stronger, more reliable workforce.