Strategies for Retaining People

The training budget is a powerful tool in your hands, use it wisely. Create the training calendar in the beginning of the year keeping in mind the following requirements:

Technical requirements of the project
Individual training requirements to boost career growth
Any gap in skills that needs to be addressed
Quite often it happens that a year passes by without the organizing of any proper training programs and the last quarter is packed with training programs of little value to the individuals involved and the organization itself. Never allow this to happen.

Internal training programs can also be conducted by the various individuals involved in the project on technologies used in the project itself or otherwise. This is an opportunity for personal growth for many individuals.

Trainings always give individuals a good release from project pressure and also helps to reinforce the conviction that the organization is serious about their future and increasing their skills.

Whenever a major project phase is over, celebrate. Put the staff welfare budget to good use. Nine pin bowling matches, group movie outings are opportunities which allow people to recharge their batteries. It also provides ample opportunities to build team spirit and strengthen relationships.

Ensure that no single individual is getting overburdened. This also calls for proactive leave management of the entire team. On occasions, you may also need to force some workaholics to take leave.

It is small acts such as these which help you make small deposits in the emotional bank account which we talked about earlier. And these deposits reap rich dividends when the time comes.

Do not be a status update maniac – trust your people to be responsible and deliver results. Ask for an update only when necessary – the best people will usually themselves keep you apprised of the status of the tasks they are working on.

Always be a person worthy of emulation. Set high standards for yourself and do not impose any rule on the team which you do not follow yourself. People automatically follow what they see you do on a daily basis and not what you tell them to do. If you cannot be the first person to enter office, at least be the last person to leave after a hard day’s work and do this only after personally ensuring that your entire team has left for the day. Always walk the extra mile for the team – always come to the forefront when required, be it project problems, technical problems, any problem which hampers progress. When people observe you walking the extra mile consistently, a wonderful chain reaction happens. Some of your elite team members start following your example and this leads to a multiplication of efforts and results.

Consider the equation:
1 person = 1 extra mile
10 persons = 10 extra miles

Do you think this will have a big project impact, you bet !

As John Maxwell says, “The right to lead is earned, not given.” In his classic book “Right to lead” Dr. Maxwell mentions an incident wherein Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf stepped into a mine field to save an injured soldier and the ripple effect it had on all the people in his division. No wonder he was called upon to lead the critical operation during the Gulf war.

True leaders always emerge out of nowhere when a major crisis develops.

Quite often, you will be faced with a situation wherein the production support team starts to feel that they are a group of 2nd class citizens and will develop an inferiority complex and get demotivated which can have a serious impact on the service delivery function. Motivating the maintenance team is a tough task but I have used the following techniques to good effect:

Emphasize the fact to the maintenance team that since they interact with the business users on a daily basis, they are the custodians of the image of IT more than anybody else, including you. The responsibility of the development team ends with project success, but the maintenance team is mainly responsible for ensuring that operations run smoothly and ongoing business success.
The job, contrary to the traditional belief is tough. More often than not, the maintenance team is at the receiving end of bad design decisions taken during development and has to put in quite a lot of performance enhancing fixes in place as the usage of the system increases.
Only maintenance engineers understand a system and the business domain in totality. This is due to the sheer nature of the work. Development engineers never usually seek to understand modules outside the scope of what has been allocated to them.
The crucial life skill of crisis management – taking decisions under mounting pressure can only be learnt in production support. This can never be learnt in development where someone senior will shield you.
When maintenance engineers understand the above points, they gradually begin to understand the value of the work which they do on a daily basis and where it fits in the bigger picture. And once people realize that their work is being valued, they usually stop complaining.

The same point is beautifully brought out in Sir Winston Churchill’s life during the Second World War. Dr. John Maxwell calls this the Law of the Big Picture in his book “The 17 indispensable laws of teamwork.” The book mentions how Sir Churchill managed to motivate coal miners to continue working on the inglorious task of working in the mines against opting to fight in the war on the frontline. A must read account if you are serious about going up on the leadership scale.

Moreover, there are ample career options in production support as well. With most organizations embracing ITIL and standards such as ValIT gaining ground, the service delivery function is being seen as a key provider of ongoing business value. Once maintenance engineers realize that they are not in a dead-end situation and career growth options are available they will not display negative attitude. This is where the project manager plays a key role. Organize ITIL trainings and watch how the maintenance team starts enjoying their role.

If you have recruited the person after proper evaluation, you will never be faced with this option. However, on occasions you will be called upon to do the inevitable. How do you still retain trust and loyalty in the team? The following strategies have helped me:

Ensure that you give the non-performer a fair chance – try to place him in an area which involves routine work and which does not involve much thinking. Many routine maintenance tasks involve only log monitoring – poor performers can be accommodated in such areas.
Use counselling to good effect – give the person a chance to close gaps and raise his performance to an acceptable level.
Ensure that all the other team members are well aware that the guy is failing to meet the minimum requirements of the job. This needs to be done in a subtle manner – it should not be too obvious.
Exercise all options before giving the final notice – and ensure that all the other team members are well aware that there really was no other option available.
Maintaining transparency in such matters ensures that there is no loss of trust and loyalty in the team. People realize that no one can be continuously paid for doing nothing.
In an interview on CNBC, Mr. Narayan Murthy, the chief mentor of Infosys mentioned that the best leaders have the ability to cast vision and the best people need to see themselves growing into important roles and achieving bigger goals in that vision. This is the best strategy to retain people.

hi jay,

This is really useful.....thanks for sharing it.

If this would have been in a single word doc file, easy to read!

Thanks

kevina

Hey Jay

Good sharing, Keep it up, and try compiling from the next time.

hey, thanks this is really helpfull...