Increasing Employee Retention with a BeSci Model of Trust
In this blog, you’ll discover:
Why Trust is an integral part of employee well-being, commitment, and retention;
How Trust from a BeSci perspective can be broken into 3 components: Competence, Process, and Care; and
How this framework of Trust is applied in a case study on hospitality workers.
How can organizations leverage BeSci to foster and maintain the talent in their organization? The Great Resignation, The Great Attrition, whatever you want to call it, people just won’t quit switching jobs or quitting altogether. In fact, 2021 report by McKinsey and Co. found that 40% of workers were considering quitting their jobs by the beginning of 2023. Like many other companies, a client of ours was experiencing an attrition rate as high as 35% in some of their divisions. After trying many “conventional” methods, they still found themselves with an ever-increasing attrition rate. That’s when they decided to turn to BeSci and reached out to us.
The client was a leading international and domestic hospitality staffing agency that specializes in placing hospitality workers in resorts, hotels, and other facilities in the U.S. They wanted to leverage BeSci in not only understanding the reasons why their hospitality workers breach their contract, but also potential ways to reduce breaches. What we learned by speaking to their current and breached staff was that a lack of Trust in the hospitality staffing agency was a top driver of contract breach.
Trust is shown to be a key factor not only for this client but for many organizations. Research has shown that employees working at high-trust organizations are more likely to plan to stay with their employer over the next year and more likely to recommend their company to family and friends as a place to work. Additionally, people at high-trust companies report less stress, more energy at work, higher productivity, more engagement, more satisfaction with their lives, and less burnout (Zak, 2017).
But what exactly is Trust and how do we build Trust? Trust might be something we intuitively experience, but it’s not something that most of us know how to systematically build. So, we turned to a three-component Behavioral Science Framework.
Component 1: Competence
Competence relates to the current and historical actions and performance of the organization and includes characteristics such as reliability, predictability, and ability in a specific context. It is also the set of skills and expertise that an organization possesses on the relevant domain. For example, does your organization have the ability to deliver to your employees what you promised to deliver? Or does your organization have the relevant support to ensure your contractors can achieve their sales and business goals?
In the context of the hospitality staffing agency, this included the organization’s ability to place hospitality workers at a reputable facility during the contract term, and the organization’s expertise in finding their workers affordable housing quickly when they relocate.
Component 2: Transparency
Transparency refers to the perceived openness of the organization, as well as its honesty and fairness of its policies. It can include the degree to which the organization adheres to principles that a worker finds appropriate. For example, is your organization transparent about the promotion process? Or how clearly does your company communicate new strategies and goals that affect compensation?
For our client, this related to how upfront the organization was about the hospitality workers’ contract terms, and the fairness and clarity of the reassignment process if they need to relocate hospitality staff.
Component 3: Care
Care is a perception that the organization’s motivations and intentions towards their employees are positive. It is the extent that an employee believes the organization values them, wants to do good to treat them well, and help them even when they are not obligated to. For example, an employee may feel like the company cares about them by being flexible about personal days or remote work, or by showing empathy when an employee is going through a hard time.
In this case study, this relates to how much the hospitality workers feel that the organization respects them and genuinely listens to their concerns; the perception that the organization understands that moving to a new country/city is challenging and wants to help them acclimate as smoothly as possible.
Applying this framework, we found that our client’s organization was performing well when it came to the Competence; however, the organization could improve upon the Transparency, such as understandability of the contract terms should a staff member decide to breach. For example, the organization could be more upfront and explicit about the financial implications if a staff member wants to end the contract. The largest opportunity for improvement turned out to be Care—many of the staff felt that the organization treated them as a business transaction rather than a person. For example, the organization could proactively check in with them once they arrive in a new city and provide them with a network of other workers in that area to help them build community and identity.
Based on these learnings, we partnered with the client leadership team to review each of the key touchpoints with the hospitality workers, from the moment they contacted the organization to the fulfillment of their contract. Additionally, we also helped them further identify areas of opportunity and how to create new initiatives to help build Trust among the hospitality workers, and hence fulfill their contracts. For example, the organization could emphasize the availability and the willingness of their assistants to help the hospitality nurses transition to the new city, or survey the hospitality workers on different BeSci personality traits (e.g., resilience and openness to experience) to better match them to the available cities.
Based on an assessment of each initiative’s impact and feasibility, the client made a number of changes to their program, including hiring a full-time staff to help manage the workers’ top concerns, increasing transparency in the recruiting process, and creating flexibility in the locations they were deployed.
This project was a great example of how our many tools in our BeSci toolbox come in handy (no pun intended). We strongly believe that we should not go into the research with principles or frameworks in mind, but rather, we listen to the stakeholders through a BeSci lens. With this approach, we were able to identify BeSci principles at play and organize them into a framework specifically personalized for our client’s unique situation.
If you’d like to learn how to leverage BeSci to create positive change for your organization, don’t hesitate to reach out!