Retention

You probably want to hire and retain the best people on your team.

You probably make efforts to choose capable people to join your organization—people who can make a strong contribution. But eventually, some of them choose to leave.

A recent article in the Boston Globe discussed how excluding talented people from decision-making often leads to a downward cycle in which they eventually “self-eject” and leave the company.

Don’t leave your people out-of-the-loop. The old Boomer example is the executives who had the “meeting” out on the golf course… which may be at a golf club that did not allow women or POC as members.

Don’t be like that.

Make a conscious choice to INCLUDE your people in both the formal meetings AND informal decision-making spaces. If your people are included in the decision-making, they feel more respected and valued. They develop an “owner’s eye” on projects and make extra efforts to make sure they succeed. And they see a path to success and fulfillment within your organization.

They will feel they are ON the team, rather than feeling like they work FOR the team.

If they are ON the team, they will bring extra efforts to the team, like mentoring junior staffers. Including them adds value and builds retention. And that really helps the bottom line, creating a virtuous cycle of improved morale and retention throughout the org chart.

It also helps the bottom-line, since replacing talented people is expensive—in civil engineering, for example, it costs an estimated 40-70% of an employee’s annual salary to find, hire, and train their replacement. Save that money AND do the right thing for your people—it seems like a logical choice.

(cited article: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/01/08/magazine/including-workers-in-decision-making/) (image generated using Midjourney)