Passing This 12-Question Test Will Help You Keep Your Best Employees

Are you concerned about keeping your best employees? If you are, and everyone with employees should be, then you've probably also wondered if there's some secret to employee retention. Over 25 years, the Gallup organization interviewed more than eighty thousand managers to find out how "the world's greatest managers find, focus, and keep talented employees."

Of all the hundreds of questions Gallup used in their interviews, they found that employees' answers to twelve questions predicted how well a company did in attracting, focusing, and keeping the most talented employees.

Twelve questions -- How Would Your Employees Answer?

1. Do I know what is expected of me?
2. Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right?
3. At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?
4. In the last seven days, have I received recognition or praise for doing good work?
5. Does my supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about me as a person?
6. Is there someone at work who encourages my development?
7. At work, do my opinions seem to count?
8. Does the mission/purpose of my company make me feel my job is important?
9. Are my co-workers committed to doing quality work?
10.  Do I have a best friend at work?
11. In the last six months, has someone at work talked to me about my progress?
12. This last year, have I had opportunities at work to learn and grow?

If most of your employees can answer positively to all twelve questions, then you have a great workplace. That's the starting point of employee retention.

Digging deeper, Gallup found that five of these questions had the strongest link to employee retention.

The Five Most Important Questions

If you want to know the real secret of employee retention, here it is. Make sure your best employees can all answer these five questions positively:

• Do I know what's expected of me at work?
• Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right?
• Do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?
• Does my supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about me as a person?
• At work, do my opinions seem to count?

So, how would your employees answer these questions? Go on. I dare you - ask them and find out for yourself. And then, look carefully at the results and make sure you do something to make things better if that's what the answers tell you is needed.

To learn more about this Gallup study, read the book First, Break All the Rules by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman. It presents the Gallup study's results in a no-nonsense way.

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