Seeking Creative Award Names to Honor Team Leaders with Zero Attrition Rates

Hi Everyone, as a part of our recognition and reward (R&R) policy, we are planning to introduce an award category specifically designed to acknowledge and reward team leaders with "Zero % attrition" and low employee turnover.

Please suggest some names that would be fitting for the award criteria.

Regards,
Malathi Ajay

Well, I can think of the following as of now:

Award Name Suggestions

- The Zero Heroes
- Shunye ke Bhagidaar
- Attrition Fixers
- Attrition Challengers
- Employee Stickers

Will you be linking "zero % attrition" with productivity? The reason I ask is that "zero % attrition" is, in fact, not good for business in the long term because you do not want to have a pool of mediocre employees.

Regards,
Autumn Jane

Hi Jane, lately, we have been facing a very high rate of new hire attrition. We are working on effective measures to curb the same, so I just thought of trying this out.

Regards,
Malathi

Autumn Jane is absolutely right—the probability of any set of employees becoming mediocre can be due to a variety of reasons. Even though the present team may be exemplary, human nature being what it is, the tendency to "take things for granted," "feeling indispensable," or "plain complacency" creeps into most people over a period of time. It's better and wiser to preempt such situations from arising rather than giving scope and then handling them at a later point in time.

Another reason—especially if the core strength of your company is in technical areas, meaning the company's business depends on upgrading/updating/enhancing technology on a very regular basis (IT, automotive, telecom, high-technology manufacturing, and some other sectors fall into this category)—is that attrition is good in the long run. The interest and convenience for any human being to upgrade/update/enhance their technical knowledge base regularly without interruption usually reduces with age—not out of choice, but due to changing priorities in life. This then leads to having, say after 5/10/15 years, what Autumn Jane mentioned: "a pool of mediocre employees."

However, this definitely doesn't mean that attrition should be ignored, since this aspect of HR has associated costs and effects on organizational well-being. The trick would be to know where to draw the line between what's acceptable and what's not. This obviously gets reflected in the scope and profundity of the training policies of the company—but that's another story.

While involving the Team Leaders in this exercise is good—it draws them into the HR process—I have a question. Has any effort been made to identify the teams where this problem is noticed/experienced more/less? If it's across the board, then the problem could lie elsewhere, and the chances of the Team Leads feeling disheartened later are high. I suggest looking into this aspect too.

All the best.

Regards,
TS

Be cautious that such an award (whatever its name may be) does not lead to the retention of non-performers. This may result in the practice of a team leader losing his or her objective judgment. Unless such an award is combined with goal-based achievement of each team and all members in each team, whose performance ratings are normalized after appraisals, this initiative may become counterproductive.

Therefore, rather than searching for a good name for the award, concentrate on the bigger issues and create a process that addresses both productivity and performance.

I feel attrition could be the outcome of many things. So, rather than rewarding the outcome, you can reward the behavior of the line manager which is leading to the reduction of attrition. If you already have an employee engagement survey, you can use the same survey results to reward the line manager. Otherwise, you can have a separate survey to measure the behaviors of your line managers.

Steps to Measure Managerial Behaviors

To determine what behaviors you need to measure, you first need to know what employees want from their managers. For example, communication, knowledge sharing, recognition, walk the talk, etc. Once you know what your employees want from your managers, you can measure your line managers on these behaviors and reward them accordingly.

Once you have the knowledge of what the employees want, you can initiate other processes to arrest the attrition.

Regards,
Ravish

Thank you for your opinion. How can we link attrition with productivity? Is there a formula for calculation?

Thank you,

Regards,
Malathi Ajay

Thank you, Ankita! What we have decided is to create an exhaustive award criteria with less attrition, employee engagement, and people-managing skills as well. I feel this would help us monitor how efficient the leads are in engaging team members. After all, the majority of people leave their managers, not the organization.

Regards, Malathi Ajay