The One-On-One Employee Experience: Your Key to Retaining Talent
In my previous blog, I mentioned that in 2021, Teamlogic IT, a Pennsylvania-based MSP, did not lose a single team member out of its 40 employees. What an accomplishment, and one that not many MSPs were able to achieve.
In our previous blog, the President and CEO of Teamlogic IT, Pratik Roychoudhury, provided five ways he effectively engages and retains talent. It came out of a “Sunny Silver Linings” podcast. In this blog from that same episode, I want to focus on one specific practice that he uses: The one-on-one experience.
To Pratik, culture and engagement is all about the one-on-one experience with his employees – those in-house and remote. It’s not just about awards and parties. It must be one-on-one. According to Pratik, he speaks one-on-one with every employee at least once a week. But the conversations aren’t just shop talk, they can also be about any personal issues the employee is experiencing.
“It’s about making sure that we understand every employee, where they’re at, what really motivates them, and what challenges do they have day to day,” he said.
Teamlogic IT Leadership measures each employee every month in the following five areas:
- Happiness at work
- Personal issues affecting work
- Health of employee’s relationship with their supervisor
- Overall job satisfaction
- Propensity to leave the organization
But I know what you’re saying (because I said it, too!): Where does Pratik find the time to meet all his employees one-on-one on a regular basis?
He admits it was much easier pre-pandemic because he could have these intimate conversations just in passing someone in the halls. Today, however, Pratik insists that all chats with employees must be scheduled and be conducted via video. He refuses to conduct calls without video because he wants to see their faces, their eyes, how they react to certain topics.
Pratik believes that the most critical value he can bring to his organization is making sure that his people are taken of. “I believe that it’s my job – and my management team’s job – to know how our employees are feeling and when they’re not feeling well or feeling down. That’s our job to figure it out.”
So he carves out one hour every day to chat with three or four employees for about 10 to 15 minutes each. “It’s this consistency that really creates culture,” he noted.
He said that the monthly ESAT rating is crucial to helping measure employee engagement. Leadership also engages all employees to assist with issues that the organization is experiencing so that the team members can be a true part of the company. “So now they’re not just employees, but they have a say in solving some of our biggest problems,” Pratik said.
I challenge you: If you’re not having one-on-one conversations with your team members, then start! Block the time. It’s not just important, it’s critical – especially if you’re not satisfied with your annual employee retention rate. Click here to listen to the entire podcast with Pratik Roychoudhury – a role model in retaining talent.
