Want to Know Why Great Employees Leave Your Company?

The Best Places to Work survey gives honest answers about what’s working and what’s not.

A manager’s single most important job is to hire good people, because even the best of us can only do so much. Good people not only perform a job well, but they fill in our gaps in expertise, knowledge and perspective.

As the smartest man of the 20th century, Albert Einstein, said: “The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don’t know.”

If a manager’s most important job is hiring good people, the second-most important job must be retaining them – which is even more challenging, especially in this hyper-evolving world where we all want better balance and more meaning in our lives.

Retaining your team is not something you can cross off your to-do list and move on to something else. It is based on everything that happens in the workplace all the time – each action, word said and email written, all the decisions made and not made, the culture that we think exists and the one that each individual employee actually perceives and responds to.

No one gets it all right, but many successful local companies depend on the annual Best Places to Work program. It is the best tool available to help you create a workplace that retains your top people.

Honest Answers From Employees

The key element in the Best Places to Work program is the confidential survey of your employees. Because their identity is concealed from you, these employees are more likely to respond honestly to the survey’s questions.

Positive responses indicate you are on the right track in that particular question’s area. Negative answers and complaints are hard to take, but they tell you where you have fallen short. These complaints are like radar: They may give you time to fix problems before your employees become less engaged and less productive in their work, or before they get so frustrated they quit.

Hawaii Business Magazine will be taking the survey again this year and studying its results. Reading what employees say is encouraging when it’s positive and hard to bear when it’s not. But that’s the medicine we must take if we want to keep our employees engaged.

Register at bestplacestoworkhawaii.com now; participation is free.

Crucial Recruiting Tool

Peter Burke, CEO of the Workforce Research Group, has been our partner in the Best Places to Work program for 18 years. He and his team are nationwide experts in detecting which workplaces have it right and how companies that fall short can improve their game.

“Organizations participate in the Best Places to Work in Hawai‘i for two main reasons. One, if you make this wellknown list, it has a massive impact on your brand as an employer,” he says. “Your presence on the list makes you the better choice when potential candidates are considering you as an employer. That’s a huge factor in hiring.”

Burke says the second reason that organizations register for the Best Places program may be even more important.

“It gives you access to the employee survey results, which are available for a small fee. You learn what your employees are thinking and feeling. That’s an invaluable management tool regardless of whether you make the Best Places to Work list or not.”

In fact, Burke says, those employee responses are “the vital information you need to turn your ordinary workplace into a Best Place to Work – if you are willing to act on what you learn.”

Many companies participate in the survey every year, including ones that routinely make it onto the list. They know that feedback can change, and they use the survey to guide them on what to keep doing and what needs to change. Register at bestplacestoworkhawaii.com. The deadline is Oct. 21. Email me at stevep@hawaiibusiness.com if you have questions.