Engage, empower, encourage

It’s one thing to attract desirable candidates in the first place. It’s quite another to undertake the daily, routine work of keeping them here. Retaining good employees requires as much effort, if not more, as it takes to hire them in the first place.

Employee engagement

Randall Foster, regional president at KeyBank in South Bend

At KeyBank in downtown South Bend, an organized, consistent approach to human capital places an emphasis on continuous recruiting and re-recruiting internally, according to Regional President Randall Foster.

In a nutshell, the approach is based on a regular review of internal employees to assess their performance and growth. Mentors are assigned to specific employees, based upon their aspirations, to help shape their careers and provide an ongoing system of communication about each employee’s skills and interests.

Management at the corporate-wide level is kept apprised of these communications. That way, whenever a new position opens up, there are already potential candidates internally who may be tapped.

Similarly, Memorial Hospital & Health System brings managers into regular contact with new hires. Managers ask questions and record the employees’ responses regarding a range of topics, from recognition for good performance to the types of training they need to perform optimally.

“Memorial’s Exceptional Moments,” a series of brief stories that appear regularly on the hospital website, have been particularly beneficial. The stories highlight staff members’ exceptional performance above and beyond job expectations. Recent stories have described, for example, how a nurse sings to patients to cheer them up, how a patient care assistant took care of a patient’s pet that was alone at home, and how a group of home-care staffers redesigned a patient’s room as motivation to get well enough to return home.

“When I hear these stories, I receive an intrinsic reward,” says Jinny Longbrake, Memorial’s director of human resources. “It makes me feel good to be part of Memorial.”

Employee empowerment

Mike Popielski, executive director of Human Resources at Ivy Tech Community College

At Ivy Tech Community College, there’s a strong sense that all managers share in the responsibility of retaining good employees, according to Executive Director of Human Resources Mike Popielski.

“Employee recruitment and retention are definitely not the same thing from our perspective,” he says. “Once an employee is hired, we have to shift gears a bit and make sure we are delivering on our promises.”

Keeping employees engaged and informed are key elements to retention, and the college strongly encourages a spirit of collegiality at all levels.

“A crucial aspect of retention is empowerment,” he says. “If employees feel they are a part of Ivy Tech’s growth and are recognized for their accomplishments, it gives them a sense of engagement and inclusion. That is why people stay.”

Employee encouragement

Tammy Freeman, director of talent management at the University of Notre Dame

While Popielski makes a clear distinction between recruitment and retention, for Tammy Freeman, director of talent management at the University of Notre Dame, the lines are significantly more blurred.

“While I am mostly involved with recruiting talent, I do work with retention as well,” Freeman says. “It’s quite similar in that you want to keep in front of people the reasons they came here in the first place. We do that through ongoing training programs, benefit packages, special discounts and so on. And we encourage them to take advantage of these benefits through regular communication channels.”

At the Indiana University School of Medicine-South Bend, retention of faculty is inextricably linked with the recruiting process. Faculty are hired at a crucial turning point in their careers, with the idea that proper nurturing of those careers will encourage them to stay.

“We hire our faculty at the assistant professor level,” says Dr. Rudolph M. Navari, assistant dean and director of the school. “Once they get promoted to the associate professor level, it’s my job to keep them here.

“People decide to stay or move based on many factors,” Navari says. “Not all of those factors are within my control. But I can make sure they get appropriate raises, lab space and financial support to entice them to stay.”

He knows firsthand that the quality of the local health care environment is in itself a powerful incentive for professionals to stay. When he himself relocated here 11 years ago from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, he elected to maintain a clinical practice. That decision put him in a position to evaluate the quality of health care in the community.

“It is significantly higher than you would expect to find in a city this size,” Navari says. “The physicians here are very well-trained, and they attract others who are just as good.

“We believe that if you get the best and brightest early in their careers, and help them establish a reputation here, they’ll want to stay here for the long term. That’s the goal.”