Johannesburg, 10 May 2019
An increasingly important question which comes up in the software industry is how to keep your staff happy and foster a stimulated and loyal workforce. Retaining good staff members is a very difficult task when trying to balance profit and culture.
One thing that has become abundantly clear is that culture drives profit, not the other way around.
I pay them so well, so why do people leave? It may sound simple, but developers leave when they are unhappy in their work environment.
So, the question should rather be phrased as follows: What makes developers unhappy?
* Not feeling valuable
* Feeling alone or unsupported
* Poor leadership
* Lack of opportunities
* Poor quality of life
We will explore these points in the topics below.
Value first
A good company is like a building. A solid core contributes to a good overall structure.
Making sure that your company values are set in alignment with your staff, is step one. The staff members need to communicate and discuss their values to ensure buy-in from everyone. After all, the employee's career goals should be aligned with the company's goals.
Ensuring that these values are fair and actioned accordingly is just as important as setting the values. A level of accountability needs to be met to ensure that everyone is on the same page.
Transparency and open communication
A good relationship is built on trust and communication. Being open and honest with your employees will grow that trust and build the transparent environment that you want. An employee who knows they can trust your response to a difficult situation will ultimately strengthen their trust in you and the values you are trying to instil in your team(s).
This will encourage them to speak up when they are unhappy with a situation, which gives you the opportunity to engage with the issue before the resignation letter hits your desk.
This also means making the time to listen to what your employees need. If necessary, bi-weekly or monthly catch-ups with your employees provide a platform that will give both parties an opportunity to communicate.
Transparency often has the positive side-effect of killing off "water cooler gossip", which is the quickest killer of company culture and, ultimately, growth. A casual comment about the companies' profits not being as high last year can quickly snowball into premature discussions about retrenchment or disappointment.
With the appropriate level of transparency, these conversations would normally never get off the ground, thereby removing the thought of moving on from employees' minds.
Growth and opportunities
An idle mind is the devil's playground. Employees need to feel that the company provides enough opportunities for growth and that they are entrusted with responsibilities. The way to achieve this is by being an enabler for your employees and ensuring that you prioritise employee growth.
What does that mean? How do we enable growth in our employees? It all comes down to giving the appropriate responsibility and opportunity to the appropriate person, and not being afraid to let them shine. It is about providing them with the means; the tools and training to succeed in their areas of responsibility.
Thereafter, growth implies taking the care to play an active role in watching the employee take on greater challenges without jumping in to determine the outcome during difficult scenarios. Employee growth should trump the need to determine the outcome of a task, meaning that while financial success is important, it is not placed ahead of an employee's opportunity to grow (assuming the level of task was well matched with the experience of the employee). An enabled team that has endured growth will lead to the financial success and scalability of a business.
Finally, it is important to hold each employee to account when the time comes, requiring either private censure or praise. The tough discussions are often overlooked but are critically important in helping your employees understand the level of excellence expected as part of the culture. If these conversations are based on fairness and trust, they will drive an even greater understanding and alignment between the employee and the business. But if these conversations are avoided or forgotten, it will lead to misaligned expectations and general unhappiness.
Employees want to be valuable team members. They want to learn and grow into new and exciting areas, especially as developers. Feeling trapped by technologies or mindsets will cause the employees to question whether or not they are in the best place for their career, which will lead to an opening for recruiters and other companies to lure them away.
Being able to provide developers with opportunities to bring new ideas and new technologies to the table is a recipe for success.
Growth and opportunity is usually always there and it comes down to two things: helping the developer see it; and the developer taking the opportunity and making a success of it.
Help me, help you: a caring culture
The "help me, help you" culture is critical to the successful retention of employees. Your work culture and environment needs to be one of general caring and collaboration to encourage your employees to be kind and gratuitous to one another.
This can often prove challenging in all industries, as employees tend to be diverse in terms of culture, backgrounds and nationality. Add to that the fact that developers also tend to be quite introverted at the best of times, and the challenge becomes even more difficult. This makes communication and, more importantly, the way we communicate, incredibly important. What can come across as patronising for some, might be perceived as helpful for others. Creating awareness about the way that your employees communicate with each other, but also how you communicate with them, is a good way to set your teams up for success.
A collaborative culture with effective communication would go a long way in retaining your employees, more so than any amount of salary, at least in the long term. Feeling like you are part of a 'dream team' that learns and grows together will create scenarios where even on the bad days, your developers can at least say they felt supported in what they were doing. Erecting a shelf is a lot easier to do when you have someone to hold it straight.
The caring culture shouldn't stop there, though. Genuinely taking an interest and care in your employees' lives and well-being is essential to driving happiness within your teams. This could manifest in the form of accurate time estimates, to ensure that your employees do not work longer hours than they need to, enabling them to enjoy after-work activities and family time.
Taking an interest also promotes an awareness of common interests between your developers, the leadership team and each other. This could lead to a catalyst of social interaction like sports groups, music groups and board game groups, which create friendships among the entire workforce, thereby helping to promote a sense of loyalty and belonging.
Fair remuneration
Fair remuneration is the wave of a well-driven ship. Being fair with your employees is the kind of culture you need to perpetuate. Social media creates a platform where people are constantly comparing themselves to each other, so any sort of perceived unfairness will create unhappiness within an individual. There will always be those driven by a larger salary, but for the most part, developers just want to be recognised and paid what they deserve.
When you were hired, ultimately you agreed on a certain salary. Throughout your career, depending on your performance, that salary has likely increased, and if the openness and transparency has been in place, there should be no disconnect or unfairness between management and the employees.
An employee who is unhappy with their salary is more likely unhappy with either the leadership or working conditions, and has taken the initiative to look for opportunities elsewhere, and found that they could earn more somewhere else. While this will often be the case, the higher salary potential is usually the final decider to move rather than the initial motivator.
Both employees and managers need to be open to discuss the fairness of the remuneration, as it is possible to fall behind the curve of the market.
Balanced life
Everyone wants to live a balanced life, but what does that mean? Having a balanced life generally means focusing on four areas of life: physical, social/emotional, mental and spiritual.
Like Dr Stephen R Covey says: "We must never become too busy to take time to sharpen the saw."
Focusing on these areas will increase the employee's capacity to produce and handle challenges. When these four areas are not paid enough attention, it will create an imbalance in the employee's life which will breed inefficiency, defensiveness and a lack of synergy, and ultimately create loss in productivity, customer satisfaction and profitability.
Here are some examples for these areas:
Physical: Healthy eating, exercising and resting, which is promoted by a caring culture that creates common interests.
Social: Building meaningful relationships, which is achieved through fostering open, honest and constructive communication.
Mental: Learning as well as teaching, which is amplified through a collaborative team structure.
Spiritual: Creating a sense of purpose, which is created through transparency and alignment of values.
This article was written by real software developers who feel they are able to influence day-to-day decisions being made in their workplace.
Having the space and the responsibility to be the master of your own destiny fosters a productive and healthy existence. Our advice: find a home in a role where you are respected and trusted, and you can enjoy the opportunity to challenge yourself and grow. If this environment is coupled with a leadership team that fosters care and transparency, the remuneration and wealth creation will take care of itself.
Loyalty invested in the right business trumps jumping for short-term salary gains. Stick around for long enough and maybe you will see what we mean!
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