As the year-end approaches, distributors often complain about insufficient staff, talent retention issues, and recruitment difficulties after the New Year. Alternatively, there are cases where an employee you have high hopes for and deliberately give many challenges to still fails to fully commit and meet your expectations. In reality, employees' attitudes and thoughts do not change in an instant; there is a process. If you can detect and adjust in time during this process, you might change the outcome. Today, we have compiled some experiences from three aspects: what employees are thinking, what they are complaining about, and how bosses can retain their hearts.

First, let's think about this question:

  1. Having a job;
  2. Earning more money;
  3. A happy and harmonious atmosphere;
  4. Learning things and accumulating experience (whether there are education and training opportunities);
  5. A sense of achievement at work, finding a sense of belonging and self-worth;
  6. Having room for growth, in line with one's career planning (whether there is room for growth). As an employee, after choosing a company, they do not actually want to change jobs frequently. Because changing jobs means unstable income and facing a new round of challenges. After bosses carefully consider the above questions, let's look at what employees are complaining about below:
  1. Inability to accurately assign one task to one person In many cases, in the management of a small team, many bosses do not fully understand the strengths, weaknesses, and future development directions of the few employees they have. A "bad leader" typically assigns multiple tasks to one person simultaneously, preventing that person from performing at their best in any task. A "bad leader" typically does not choose subordinates who are more capable than themselves, which only creates a vicious cycle, and your team will never have stronger people.
  2. Dead atmosphere among members It is necessary to let team members understand and talk to each other. This way, when you ask any one of them, they can report on another person's situation well. And the person who directly reports to you should be the one with the most information and the most active.
  3. Don't say you have no goals As a boss, your thoughts, actions, etc., will affect the development of the entire team in all aspects. You have many things to do, but the most important and critical point is that you must be a leader with goals and vision; otherwise, your team will seriously malfunction. When goals are clear, the small teams within the larger team can better clarify their goals and directions, bringing good momentum to the final goal.
  4. Wrong goals can ruin everything Setting goals blindly and unrealistically will dampen team morale and throw the team into chaos, leading to a crisis of blind expansion for the enterprise.
  5. Fear of change This can be said to be the most common and dangerous characteristic of failed leaders. In a period of great social change, everything is changing. Sticking to old ways, not thinking of progress, just going through the motions, and only thinking about how to maintain the existing strength will eventually turn the team into a stagnant pool. Will failure be far behind?
  6. Inability to decisively fire "bad people" "Bad people" are chronic poison in a team. They are opportunistic, harm others for their own benefit, and spread negative energy, all of which bring bad influence to the team. If the boss cannot fire these "bad people" in time, they will inevitably fail to retain the "good people" in the team.
  7. Not respecting or ignoring employees If there is only individual heroism, eagerness to show off, going one's own way, and not listening to any opinions or suggestions from subordinates, then this leader will make subordinates feel unappreciated and become disheartened, morale will drop, and eventually the team will lose in fierce competition, and the leader will become a failed "bad leader."
  8. Unwilling to admit mistakes Bad leaders have obvious cognitive biases that prevent them from seeing their own shortcomings. They will not admit their mistakes, or even think about them, because the process is too painful. As a leader, you should identify all success indicators in advance and decide whether they are correct. Additionally, actively seek help from internal and external resources. Have you committed any of the above 8 points? How many? As a boss, please think carefully. Then, look at the 12 methods I have compiled for retaining people.
  9. Retain people by winning their hearts People working away from home have a few thoughts: first, to earn more money; second, to learn something from the boss; third, to have some development in a big company; fourth, to be happy and have a relaxed atmosphere at work. Besides money, the boss should satisfy the other three needs of employees, win their hearts, care for them, and appropriately give material and spiritual rewards. Do not treat them as mere workers, but as helpers in your career, people who can help solve problems and share hardships. Sincerely help them, care for them in daily life, consider their future, and give timely affirmation when they achieve results. These are all ways to motivate employees.
  10. Understand the real reasons and help employees see pros and cons A good communication conversation should not be the boss talking alone, but should let the employee speak more, so that you can understand their true thoughts from their words, and then you can prescribe the right remedy, rather than it being entirely your personal stage. Moreover, during this conversation, be careful not to create a feeling that it doesn't matter whether they stay or leave.
  11. If the employee is determined to leave, do not make it difficult During the conversation, you must be neutral, as a friend, help the employee analyze both sides, objectively present the situation, and let the employee see the situation clearly to choose, rather than blindly belittling competitors, which only makes your image darker. If the employee is determined to leave and it is hard to change their mind, it is better to be generous and let them go, without making it difficult or scolding them. Spend more time on the next work arrangement. At the same time, if you think the employee is truly excellent, you might tell them that you respect their personal choice, but after they have resolved their personal matters, the company's door is always open for them to return. This may actually make the employee feel nostalgic.
  12. Retain people not at this moment, but in daily management In the daily regulations on employee entry and exit, you can impose restrictions, such as strict rules that those who join competitors will never be rehired, to make employees wary of jumping ship easily. In addition, the key is how much effort you put into employee management on a daily basis. Whether employees are physically present but mentally absent, or fully devoted to work, and how high their loyalty and sense of belonging are, all depend on decisions at critical moments. Therefore, daily work is very important and can nip problems in the bud.
  13. Retain people starting from recruitment Retention is a long-term behavior, not a short-term one. Simply put, the act of retention begins at the time of recruitment. Often, when we recruit, we use our own requirements and standards to measure and select a person. Conversely, is it not the same for the candidate? So, if you want to retain employees, especially your core employees and those you need, then the retention behavior has already begun when you recruit them. In the process of hiring, appointing, selecting, training, and managing, all work is closely related to retention, and of course, it also determines whether the employee is willing to share weal and woe with the enterprise.
  14. Small enterprises retain people by the boss, large enterprises retain people by systems In management, large enterprises and small enterprises are different. Small enterprises rely on the boss to retain talent, even with the boss's charisma, while large enterprises should rely on systems to retain people. In the entrepreneurial stage, because the scale is small and the number of personnel is small, the boss can directly deal with each employee, and the boss often plays a key role in retaining talent; but once the enterprise develops and grows, relying solely on the boss to retain people is no longer realistic, and a mature system is needed to retain talent. In addition, there should be career retention, environment retention, and salary retention. Career retention means giving employees a platform to use their abilities and improve in the team. Environment retention includes the working environment and humanistic environment; a good environment can make employees work with peace of mind and believe that hard work pays off.
  15. Use profit sharing to bind employees In the FMCG industry, employee turnover is high, excellent employees are hard to retain, and customer maintenance is difficult to guarantee. You can try the year-end dividend method, specifically implemented as follows: each year, based on the growth rate of turnover, take a certain proportion of profit to distribute as dividends to employees, for example, take 140,000 yuan from the profit as a reward. In the distribution, supervisors take a higher proportion. Supervisors then divide the shares among team members based on performance, of course, under the supervision of the boss.
  16. Use assessment to retain employees Some enterprises have very high employee turnover rates, and some employees leave without even taking their wages, saying "there is something at home" when asked why they leave. At this time, you should talk to employees to understand their psychology, and even find employees who have already left to ask why they left. You will find that their opinions are almost surprisingly consistent: it is not that the enterprise is bad, nor that the boss is bad, but that the supervisor managing them is bad. The supervisor is unfair; whoever has a good relationship with him gets the bonus. This makes some employees feel that their efforts are not rewarded accordingly. Therefore, you can establish an effective assessment system.
  17. Enterprises and employees should be mutually loyal The fundamental reason for the flow of excellent employees is that a mutual loyalty relationship between excellent employees and the enterprise has not been established. On the one hand, employees are not loyal to the enterprise but jump between industries for other benefits; on the other hand, the enterprise is not loyal to employees, does not create an environment conducive to employee loyalty, and often "kicks someone when they are down." For example, when facing operational difficulties, instead of thinking about how to work together to overcome difficulties, they first consider layoffs, making employees generally unable to build trust in the enterprise. The result is inevitably that employees are forced to move rapidly between industries to gain more benefits.
  18. Retaining employees depends on comprehensive factors To retain excellent employees, it is not just one factor but a combination: first, the enterprise must have its own corporate culture so that employees truly feel a sense of belonging; second, there must be a comprehensive welfare system so that employees have no worries; third, implement family-style management, where managers treat the enterprise as their home and employees as their relatives; fourth, provide employees with a development platform to meet their development needs at different levels; fifth, assign work according to ability, "give a tree to a monkey, a mountain to a tiger."
  19. Teams need "old employees" The value of excellent employees in an enterprise is immeasurable. These excellent employees are mostly old employees, and they are intangible assets. Old employees are familiar with their work, have high tacit understanding, and do not make routine mistakes, so important tasks can be delegated to them. Especially in talent cultivation, the most needed is the words and deeds of old employees. Turning old employees into internal part-time trainers and conducting regular training not only cultivates talent for the enterprise but also invisibly saves costs.
  20. Employees need a "sense of happiness" The enterprise's attention and support for excellent employees can be reflected in many aspects, such as welfare, bonuses, training, and also in promotion and other aspects. Special incentives in welfare and development based on the value employees create in the company not only strengthen the cohesion of excellent employees to the team but also let new employees see a "role model," thereby strengthening team loyalty. -END- ****Click the image to read directly FMCG industry's most professional and practical knowledge base [ Reply with the yellow number in the background to view the following keywords ] | 001 Excellent article selection | 002 Distributor market operation | 003 Terminal visit management | 004 Sales supervisor skills | 005 Sales improvement techniques | 006 Channel expansion | 007 Managing distributors | 008 Distributor development | 009 Distributor internal operation management | 010 Team management | 011 Efficient distribution skills | 012 Sales manager's eighteen skills | 013 KA operation methods and strategies | 014 First lesson for new salespeople | 015 Internet, brand | 016 Distributor B2B transformation |