People are loyal to businesses led by people who care

At a recent meeting a senior HR Director said to me: "Real engagement is when one of your people says to a friend: 'I'm working for a great firm – why don't you come and join me there?'"

Over years, and years, of consultancy I have worked with businesses where 'engagement' was high and others where it was low. My story is of one firm which achieved high engagement.

A husband and wife team decided to go into the broadband business just as it was taking off in the UK. I got to know them when there were 8 people in the business and helped them grow to 120 people. Even during that rapid growth the staff found:

• It was fun
• There was a fresh challenge every week, sometimes every day
• We knew what was happening, we could see where we were going
• The owners were open with us, and told us the problems before we found them
• We all saw the progress figures, and the profits, and could see how we were doing
• They knew us all and our families
• As our company grew, so did we, and our jobs.

It was a happy, friendly, productive, engaged business, under the influence of the owners, who did very well out of it. It became a major company; the owners were very active in building it up, and they eventually sold to a bigger company.

It was not a small company when it made that change; it had settled down, become mature, the office roof did not leak, but the spirit was still there. Their people were still 'engaged', under the enthusiasm of the founders and the culture they had developed.

It changed a bit when it became a plc, and even more when the founders left and 'more professional' managers came in. Its decline continued and they became merged, perhaps I should say submerged, in a bigger organisation with plenty of policies they had never seemed to need before. But it still retained much of the enthusiasm it had in the early years.

I often use this company as an example when talking to organisations (big and small) that are trying to find the magic formula to retaining their staff. Sometimes all it takes is the attitude and enthusiasm of a manager in some department with an output which is clearly of value, and to which the staff can relate personally.

It is a matter of the way managers at all levels show that they care strongly about the results their teams get, about their people and their progress, about the attitude of their people to the work, the way they behave to each-other – in short all those aspects of the job which together lead to high performance.

Recrion is a specialist in talent management and staff retention. Visit www.recrion.co.uk for more information.