People before Process: How to Keep Your Staff

Many people and companies see the end of the year as a time of transition. Staffing needs for the next year are assessed, and often people see the holiday time as a chance to take some additional days off amid a transfer to a new job. Especially in tech, turnover at this time of year -- at any time of year, really -- is part of doing business. But should it be? Isn’t investing in employee development and retention key to our success? From my perspective, I value our employees and find them central to the company and brand we’ve built. They’re not expendable. As EVP of Innovation, I spend a lot of time thinking about our next big products, but I also spend a lot of time thinking about how we breed a culture that our employees and customers value and that makes them all want to remain part of our business. In order to build a culture that makes people want to stay and excel, I have to think about why they leave, and, in my experience, that has a lot to do with innovation.

As a company grows, it is harder and takes longer to get stuff done. Stakeholders who could all fit around the table become organizations with people, goals, and objectives. When growing from a start-up of a few people to a booming business of dozens or hundreds or even thousands, needs begin to compete. What was once a few engineers writing code becomes departments of engineers organized around products and marching to different releases. This is when having experienced management is critical to a company’s retention plan. A company cannot be so restrictive that new things can’t happen without a million hoops to jump through. Everything from research through development to release must be fast-paced for a company to remain competitive two-ways: one, for customers, and two, for employees, and not necessarily in that order. I’ve seen top engineers leave companies because they’ve found their creativity stifled by layers of misguided approval processes that do not promote and reward achievable and measurable results, and they often walk to a place that gives them the room to make things happen more efficiently than a big company will allow. The key is to have the right processes in place that empower and motivate people so that they can be their best. Put people in the center of it all: your employees, your customers, your partners.

“People before process” is the Golden Rule of employee retention. And when you think of people first, it’s the big things that come into play, and not just money and benefits. Things like flexibility, worksite location and features, ability to learn and grow, and chances to make an impact are very important. Nowhere in there is product-market fit. If you don’t have people who want to work for your company because it works for them, too, your product doesn’t matter. Take, for example, the company described in an article of Steve Blank’s last summer, one which relocated from Palo Alto to the East Bay over a manager’s objections. I don’t know which company did that, but I see it happen often, as real estate in the Bay Area is pricey. Moving someone’s work an hour away from where it once was is not an insignificant thing, and it’s one that is likely to cost you your experienced staff. If you think that you can replace people as easily as this company believed it could, that may not seem like a big deal, but there are huge costs therein. Among those, it costs a company time and money in on-boarding and such that most tech companies really can’t afford when it comes down to it. I prefer to retain talent by continuously investing and growing them. They have knowledge, history, and can move quickly. My company has found the way to do that through greater flexibility amid our mobile, flexible workforce. We invested in it for our clients as well as for ourselves when we acquired collaboration software company Glip. Why lose staff with a physical relocation when you can not lose a minute by offering them tools to do their job from wherever they choose? Bigger companies need to take note: flexibility and mobility is the future. There’s something wrong if you think your staff is expendable. And there’s something bigger wrong if you make decisions that render them feeling not valued, like via a far physical move. Why not create the win/win of keeping good people through offering them solutions that fit their lives and your needs? “People before process” is better for everyone.

The tone of valuing people must come from the top, and that’s part of the reason I spend time writing about it as an innovator. In some cases, founders who stay on to run companies have to be “reprogrammed” a bit to really get it. Egos grow with valuations sometimes, but, as a start-up scales, there needs to be a constant reminder that a company’s most valuable assets are the employees who make it great. A culture of innovation demands the recognition of talent and making people feel like they matter. Here among the leadership of my fifth successful company, I can assure you that matters most. The best transition you can make isn’t to a new job, but to a company that values people, starting with your own.

Originally published on LinkedIn