Humberto Valle on Retaining Employees

We live in the millennial age which technically is an entrepreneurial age  and everyone in our generation wants to work for themselves way more than our parents did, I think is cyclical as our grandparents generation was driven by entrepreneurship, some was probably accidental but none the less. One of my most recent startups revolve around this particular notion of self-promotion.

The truth is that about 65% to 75% of adult age Gen Y will make up the small business owner capita in the country, that leaves about 25% of Gen Y who might want to but will never get to start their own businesses and will be working for someone else. Just because they might work for someone doesn't mean that they are not driven and entrepreneurial individuals and will do whatever they can to get ahead in the workplace without going on the ‘treppy road.

OppenUp is a social community based audition platform for freelancers and job searchers. OppenUp harnesses our basic need of wanting social acceptance, community engagement and support for our needs. The less psychological factors to our startup is that our generation is self-driven and has grown up with video, social media and picture sharing we have become more savvy in many real world situations including employable skills yet the way we find jobs has not changed in over 20 years.  So why do we keep going to job boards whose only interest is advertising jobs not getting you hired and creating accounts, sometimes paying, and applying for jobs we don’t know what company post them or where they are compared to you and or what  others think about it or even who else has applied? CEO’s and Hiring Managers, why do we stick to the old broken way of hiring?

Be Transparent

This doesn't mean have windows in every office, this means encourage employee ownership. The idea is that when you are transparent with your operations and business needs to grow your employees with become more like evangelist of your business entity and encourage its business and act like owners which reflects through increased productivity and faster growth.

This is especially important to realize when employing the Gen. Y who is not afraid to try things without actually being trained in them first, we are out to change the world and if we can’t at the moment we will try to help our employers and whoever gives us a chance. You as business owner or CEO need to encourage failure and employee ownership, this will have a great impact in your company, your sales and the company culture (will be covered later) let us take charge in projects or team efforts chances are we the opportunity will be taken seriously as is a dog eat dog world and if we are allowed to take the plate we will do our best to keep a momentum going, you will be simultaneously encouraging a company culture of success, self-discipline and pride that will help you retain employees longer.

Be more than flexible.

Be understanding of their needs and circumstances, I can’t tell you how many times as employee I would feel secure of my jobs and even though my boss was flexible with my schedule or personal needs every sense of job security was lost when talking about it. This issue can arise if you are ignorant on a topic, especially when dealing with inter racial employees or just in general. If an employee is affected by a family members health condition, being understanding is far better for the employee than the flexibility of letting them leave the workplace to take care of things at home because of the unknown… why are you so flexible with me? could you not care whether I’m here or not, so does that mean I’m very expandable? Which can then deteriorate the output of the employee as insecurity kicks in or because of it he begins to look for other opportunities and you just lost an otherwise great employee.

Provide Opportunities

This goes back to how this generation is changing expectations in the workplace, employees are more determined and entrepreneurial minded which means that if they are working for you, it is your responsibility to nurture that will and encourage them to grow professionally even if is something that can lead them away from your company, if you’re a smart CEO or owner you can even figure out how to utilize your employee’s learned skills. A close friend of mine owns a cleaning company, he employs a small troop of commercial cleaners who are offered tuition help after a year of employment so that they can learn basic business through community so that then he can teach them how to start their own cleaning companies if they want to or help manage his better, so far the turnout for him and employees has been great. 

Money is money regardless of how you earn it and so employees love the idea of getting their own cleaning companies even if a starting point only, better than waiting a year for a 2% pay increase right? keeps them motivated and you make business partners & friends in the process not ruthless competitors.

Encourage a Bit of Down Time

The average employee will spend the majority of their lifetime earning a paycheck, the least you can do is try to make the environment easy going and more engaging for them. By encouraging down time your employees get to talk to each other and get to know each other more which can lead to more efficient project management, coordination and output at the same time you make it a place of business for them not a place of work which changes the entire moral of an employee because now they get to enjoy their time as they conduct their business (earn their pay). This is domino effect that can take an entire book dedicated to this but this increases loyalty, once you have your employee’s loyalty you can be unstoppable in the market.