For most of us, one of our goals is to keep our employees for a long time. When we have a great team member, we want them to stick around. There are significant economic and emotional and sort of systemic reasons why we wish long-term employees.
But what we also want from our long-term employees is that they keep getting better. We work in an industry where if we don’t keep learning and we don’t keep improving, we very quickly can become obsolete. So one of the things you need to do inside your agency is build in the reinforcement that no matter how good you are today, you need to keep getting better.
And the best way to do that is in your one-on-one meetings with every single employee.
We shouldn’t be rewarding employees for longevity. We should be rewarding employees for the contributions they make to the agency. And part of the contribution we need every single team member to make is that they keep getting better. So you need to build in systems and process inside your organization to not only encourage improvement, but to reward improvement.
So don’t leave it to chance. Build a program into your agency so that every employee keeps getting better and better over time.
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Hey, everybody. Drew McLellan here from Agency Management Institute this week coming to you from Tampa, Florida. You know, one of our goals for most of us, anyway, is to keep our employees for a long time. When we have a great team member, we want them to stick around. There's great economic and emotional and sort of systemic reasons why we want long-term employees. But what we also want from our long-term employees is that they keep getting better. We work in an industry where if we don't keep learning and we don't keep improving, we very quickly can become obsolete. So one of the things you need to do inside your agency is build in the reinforcement that no matter how good you are today, you need to keep getting better. You need to keep getting smarter. You need to stay current. And the best way to do that is in your one-on-one meetings with every single employee.
And again, it might not be you having the one-on-one, but they're having it with their direct supervisor – one-on-one meetings every other week. And in those one-on-one meetings, we are setting quarterly growth goals. And there should be a significant reward, whether it's participating in a bonus program, whether it's extra time off, whether it is your eligible for a promotion or a raise, there should be significant reinforcement of the idea that we have to keep getting better. And the employees that complete all quarterly, all four quarterly growth goals and improve in significant ways in terms of what they – the value they bring to the agency, the value they bring to clients. Those are the employees that, you know, it's a career. It is a profession for them. And they want to keep honing their craft.
For other folks, it's a job and they're happy doing the job. They're happy doing the same way over and over and over again. We shouldn't be rewarding employees for longevity. We should be rewarding employees for the contributions they make to the agency. And part of the contribution we need every single team member to make is that they keep getting better. So you need to build in systems and process inside your organization to not only encourage improvement, but to reward improvement. Because if we don't do that, then we're just hoping that they get better without really giving them the path forward and without helping them understand that that's how they advance in their career.mSo don't leave it to chance. Build a program into your agency so that every employee keeps getting better and better over time.
