Posted: 29 Sep 2009 07:31 AM PDT

By Louis Alloro - September 29, 2009

I am driven to distraction. It's just what is and what it's always been.

"No grass grows under his feet," my mom used to say of me as a small boy, because I was always moving, always doing. Even now as an adult, I have trouble sitting still. In sitting to write these first paragraphs, I was led to the refrigerator (twice), to check for notifications on Facebook, to email. Ding, ding - a text message on my phone! I wonder who's on The View today? Sirens out my window; hope all is okay.

This story, albeit mine, gets in the way of my productivity and performance. "I am a Gemini, so it's okay" I used to tell myself - but this default mechanism of excusing an unwelcomed behavior has self-limiting consequences.

Focus as Weakness or Strength

Conscious of this predisposition, what do I try to tell myself now? That I sometimes love to focus, that I'm good at focusing, that focusing is my friend. I find examples of times where I have focused successfully, to remind myself that I am not my weakness.

I also remind myself that I am not alone. Many people have problems with focusing. According to NIMH, AD/HD, one of the most common mental disorders in children and adolescents, also affects an estimated 4.1 percent of adults, ages 18-44, in a given year.

The Mayo Clinic reports that "children with ADHD also struggle with low self-esteem, troubled relationships and poor performance in school."

Let's not forget that these children inevitably become adults, often with similar struggles. This is why it's so important we teach strengths- and evidenced-based strategies to help people change the story, change the habit, and change the reality.

Starting Basic - ABCs

Affective, Behavioral, Cognitive

As a coach, I like to think of interventions across three dimensions: Feeling (Affective), Doing (Behavioral) and Thinking (Cognitive). These cognitive drills above such as finding where I have been good at focus stem from my experience with the Penn Resiliency Project and Seligman's work on Explanatory Style. The voices in our head can be tamed, especially if they're saying "You're bad at this."

And the affective. Let's use this article as an example. My deadline is fast approaching. I know I do not want feelings of anxiety or disappointment. What I do want: feelings of serenity and success, which will contribute to my overall happiness. Knowing how I want to feel means I will have to work intentionally to break old patterns (like a tendency I have to drift attention) that could prevent me from experiencing the good feelings that come from publishing.

Finally, the doing. Changing behavior is key. But in considering how habitual most of our behaviors are, we must always keep in mind the cognitive and affective pieces as we begin to shift behavior. When it comes to change, Prochaska urges us not to jump into action, but to spend time preparing (feeling and thinking).

Here are a few ideas based on Positive Psychology that have worked for me in terms of changing my ability to focus:

• Prime the Environment. This can be as simple as putting post-its on my computer screen that say "commitment" and "focus" or as subtle as setting out a vase of flowers by my computer when it's time to work. When work time is over, I put the vase in the cupboard, so that my brain can be primed for Facebook and personal email.

• Clear Space.Is your space clean and organized? I know for me, when I spend some time tidying and filing the physical space, I create psychological space too-consciousness in a different dimension.

• Mindset. Are you ready for change?

• Be/Quiet. It's so important we take time to quiet our minds. Too much thinking, not enough being. The benefits of meditation have been made clear. Start slowly with three, five, eight minutes of silent breathing. Email me if you'd like some guidance and accountability with that.

• Savor.We can be mindful and in the moment through savoring. At your next meal or during your next walk down the street, see if you can activate all senses. This will require you slow down and enjoy the process of eating or walking as not just a means, but an end.

• Broaden & Build. Another way to build the capacity to savor is to set up a positive portfolio: a collection of artifacts (pictures, quotes, souvenirs, etc.) that elicit positive emotion. Spend time in this space every day. For me, an expansive mind and heart allow me to focus on the things that are important.

• Say What You Mean. Pay attention to language. If I say I am Louis, the guy with ADHD, then guess what? . . .

• Do What You Say. Only put on today's to-do list what you can accomplish today. Don't let the urgent take the place of what's important. Block out time to meditate, exercise, and spend time with your positive portfolio just as you would schedule time for business meetings.

• Self-Regulate. Like any muscle, self-regulatory resources require exercising and conditioning to make them stronger. Go on a media diet and allow yourself Facebook, email, or other distractions only during certain (and limited) times.

Or . . . If you need to be allowing yourself more time to spend on Facebook and email, do that too. Super-productivity can have its own consequences. Everything is relative.

Seek Your Correct Balance

We are always in relationship.

Speaking of relativity (see how my mind works?)-keep in mind that our attention and time are limited too. With no time or space to see new or different things, we may fail to see patterns (often habitual in nature) that are getting in the way of us being our best selves. There are so many parts of life that make it worth living, a super strong career is just one of them-no career at all is another one. If you work too many hours, see if you can cut down by 1 hour each week until you reach a more healthy load. If you do not work any hours, start by 5 minutes at a time, volunteering even. Remember, baby steps: life is about progress not perfection.

In The Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle says, "Virtue lies in the meanbetween the extreme." From this Facebook junkie, I can tell you, turning it off to let the grass grow a bit under my feet and in different directions feels good. Maybe you'll give it a try, whatever that means for you, too?

Author's Note: If too much or too little distraction are getting in the way of you being your best self, contact me for a free coaching consultation. I am not a life-coach, not a career-coach, not a happiness coach. I'm a coach-coach, always in your corner, helping you find harmony, holding something for you.

Images:

Grass/Feet: creativecommons.com, damork

Affective/Behavioral/Cognitive: freeclipartnow.com

Computer/Flowers: creativecommons.com, 1happysnapper

Always In Relationship: Louis Alloro

This article is © 2009 PositivePsychologyNews.com.

Beware Of The Hidden Costs Of Staff Turnover

While the implementation of an effective exit interview process will help point to the reasons why people depart your business, you really know the cost of each departure?

Research shows nearly 25 per cent of Australian employees will change jobs this year. And when you consider staff turnover costs are up to 150 per cent of a person's annual salary it's obvious why staff retention is quickly becoming a burning management priority. This article discusses the hidden costs of staff turnover and suggests a number of practical measures to help improve staff retention and motivation.

Just Ask Your Staff!

 

Paul Quinn discusses the growing trend within HR functions towards setting up continuous web-based staff feedback loops.

Renowned HR expert Dr. John Sullivan once wrote:

Asking employees at time of termination "why are you leaving" is like asking your spouse "how to improve the marriage" on the day before the divorce is final! By that time it's too late to do much anyway.

Although staff retention rates are a major concern amongst many of today's HR leaders, there are some who still find the real causes of high staff attrition rates harder to pin point than the culprit in a classic Agatha Christie murder mystery.

A simple example stems from the Saratoga Institute. Their 2003 survey revealed that 89% of managers believe employees leave for more money. But, in fact, the survey found that 88% of employees leave for reasons other than money. Indeed a study by Mercer Human Resource Consulting conducted in Australia in 2003 revealed that the most important attributes that Australian employees value about their job were:

1. The existence of opportunities for advancement,
2. Training, and
3. A clear career path.

Generally speaking, people actually enjoy being asked for their opinion - and your staff members are no different. Why risk staying in the dark regarding the main reasons for staff attrition at your organisation when there are many easy ways to find this information out? One increasingly popular approach is to run a cluster of specific online staff surveys focused on a specific theme. Three such examples, all with ties to the 'staff retention' theme are summarised below:

1. New Starter Feedback Survey - typically sent within the first 6 weeks of the new employee commencing, a new starter survey is a great way to gain an accurate gauge on the effectiveness of your recruitment and staff induction program. Even at this early stage the survey can also be an accurate pointer towards that employee's level of engagement. Furthermore, a new starter survey is increasingly seen by employers as an opportunity to solicit referrals from the new hire regarding the names of the top performers within the company they have just departed.

2. 'Stay' Survey - also known as a 'Pre-exit Interview', the Stay Survey is typically sent to ALL top performers, or a random snapshot of employees, every six months. The survey seeks to understand what top performers like / dislike about their role, what the company can do to help improve their enjoyment / motivation / productivity at work, and what factors (if any) would be most likely to cause them to leave the organisation. This provides the organisation with a golden opportunity to address problem issues well before a star performer's decision to look elsewhere has been made.

3. Exit Interview Survey - a growing number of companies are beginning to move their exit interview process online to capture the benefits of instant reporting of results, process centralisation and consistency, and the minimisation of interviewer bias. Furthermore, utilising an online survey format for exit interview surveys can often yield good response rates and result in honest and well considered feedback.

Interesting facts regarding staff turnover

Over 50% of the people recruited in to an organisation will leave within two years.
One in four people recruited will leave within six months.
Nearly 70% of organisations report that staff turnover has a negative impact.
Nearly 70% of organisations report having difficulties in replacing staff.
Approximately 50% of organisations experience regular problems with employee retention.

Cost of staff turnover

According to a survey conducted by Mercer Human Resource Consulting in Australia, it suggested that throughout Australia and New Zealand about 25% employees were planning on looking for a new job within the next 12 months.

Reviewing the cost of staff turnover for individual companies can be quite disturbing. Mercer estimated that the total cost of staff turnover could be equalled to anything from 50% to 150% of an individual's annual salary.

For instance, a company with a total amount of 250 employees earning an average of $49,000 annually would pay around $3 Million per year because of staff turnover if Mercer's research were to be believed.

The link between retention and performance

According to research there is a clear link between successful staff retention strategies and the performance of a company. If you take Fortune Magazine's list of the top 100 employers (most of whom have exceptional staff retention records), more than 80% have outperformed their peers on the Standard and Poors Index.

An Aberdeen Group report in 2001 established their findings regarding the performance of high performing organizations. Top performing employees deliver nearly 12 times the value of mid-level performers.

It is evident that happy employees are motivated and remain loyal causing employers to reap the rewards.

Why worry about retaining your staff?

Not only do we lose valuable experience when our staff leave, but organizations need to take a hard look at other factors that are being influenced as well. For instance they need to take a look at:

The costs of decreased productivity.
Lost investment in training and development
Lost of revenue for key sales
Recruitment costs
The new employee's induction into the business culture
Management downtime in interviewing new candidates
Legal fees and payout commitments

There are a lot more to staff turnover costs than first meet the eye, and this is why it is crucial that we recruit the right candidate from the start and then do what we can in order to keep them challenged and satisfied.

Why does your staff leave?

A person's decision to leave the organisation is influenced by what we call the push and pull' factors. The employees' satisfaction, commitments and the way in which they are managed all contribute as push factors' causing a person's disposition to stay or leave.

Decisions to leave are rarely caused by pay satisfaction. Overall, around 10% of leavers across all organisations leave due to their being unhappy of financial circumstances. It is by no means a majority, despite this, most employers place pay-related measures as the key of their retention strategies.

The real reasons why employees leave can be summed up by the following factors:

Intrinsic Work Factors
It is variations of challenging work that uses the employee's skills to the full.

Climate and Culture
Studies have shown a strong link between an individual's reason to leave and the dominant culture of the organisation.

Leadership Style
Throughout most organizations, first line managers are responsible for creating the most push' factors that can lead to resignation or retention. Good managers always deliver high retention as a by-product.

How staff turnover are affecting New Zealand organizations

New studies have highlighted the elevated costs of staff turnover affecting New Zealand hospitals. The study, which has been conducted by the University of Auckland, established that four out of ten nurses in general wards move jobs every year.

And it costs a staggering amount of $25,000 to replace each staff member. Hospitals alone spend around $20,000 per leaving nurse on temporary cover costs and overtime, while another $5000 goes to advertising for new staff and to other training related costs.

With 40% of nurses leaving their jobs each year, over 73% of the leavers are being replaced by new graduates. This causes a wealth of experience to be lost, leaving the hospitals to train the new graduates on the job, which eventually is the most expensive part.

Hospitals need to come up with effective retention strategies in order to keep their nurses, especially since there is a shortage of nurses worldwide as well as in New Zealand.

How to retain your staff?

Listen to your people
Make your employees feel that you are paying attention to them and are interested in them on a personal basis.

Reward and Recognise
Make it known to your employees that you value their opinion and ideas as well as letting them know that you are watching their performance. Know when to Reward your staff.
Sometimes something as simple as a monthly Star Performer' award handed out by a manager in front of other employees can have a far significant impact on motivation and retention than any other financial award will.

Career Development
Develop and craft strategies for each individual employee that will strengthen their development for future success in their careers. It may mean to send employees to various seminars once in a while. Whatever effort you make in order to help someone's career will be long remembered.

Provide Challenges
Employees should be provided with challenging work that will keep them alert and excited, this will cause them to consider staying as they would not want to miss out on good opportunities.

Work/Life Balances
Take work and life balances of your staff into consideration, strive to provide them with a satisfactory mix of time at both work and home. Consider providing them with opportunities such as having a few hours each week where they can work from home. Long hours at the office and satisfaction of your employees do not tend to mix well.

Salary Watch
Make sure to check that you are paying at an appropriate level regarding the particular role of your employees.

Mentors
Partner experienced and inexperienced workers together so that both workers can gain substantial knowledge from each other.

In conclusion

In order to retain our staff we must make sure that we realise the importance of our staff. We must realise that customers and clients do not come first in our organization but make sure that our staff comes first. If we place our staff first, they will be more happy and motivated and as a bonus they in turn will place importance on our customers and clients. Strive for a relaxed and peaceful organization culture and you will find you are more than halve way to retaining your staff.

Other incentives and flexible work options are also important as Australian small businesses struggle to stop valuable staff members moving on and they battle a national skills shortage and just 4 per cent unemployment.

Hudson's HR surveyed 7185 employers nationally and found almost one in three said staff retention was a problem for their business and nearly all - 96 per cent - used formal staff engagement programs.

The most widely used staff engagement strategy, at 67.5 per cent, was flexible work options. This included job sharing, flexible leave and working from home.

Financial incentives were embraced by 62 per cent of employees, followed by leadership development (48.2 per cent), succession planning (47.7 per cent) and mentor programs (36 per cent).

Western Australia was the only state where employers put financial incentives top, with all other states rating flexible work as the key.

Hudson said it considered the main drivers behind this to be the boom in the WA economy and the state's geography, as employers use financial incentives to lure talent from the East.

And in certain industries money seemed to talk louder than others.

The resource sector considered financial incentives as the leading engagement tool (82.5 per cent).

In the financial services sector, 79.4 per cent relied on financial incentives, followed by IT (74.5 per cent), construction, engineering and property (74.3 per cent) and manufacturing (62 per cent).

Hudson's national practice leader of assessment and development Simon Moylan said, with the job market continuing to tighten, employers work harder to attract, engage and retain talent.

He said a successful staff engagement strategy should take "a holistic approach, incorporating a range of initiatives including financial incentives, flexible work options, management support, ensuring job fit and career advancement opportunities".

He said many enticements were performance driven and were in the form of share options rather than a bonus.

"This offers a financial outcome, plus it ties them to the company for a given period," Mr Moylan said.

"The cost of losing good staff far outweighs the cost of implementing these initiatives, so ultimately it's about offering an attractive employment proposition where employees have the option to leave but choose to stay."

He said the "visible" cost of turnover, including recruitment, hiring, orientation and training sits somewhere between 50 and 150 per cent of an individual's annual salary.

"However, the additional unknown costs such as loss of expertise, reduced productivity, lower morale, the cost of the vacant position and the training of the new hire, means the true cost of turnover may be up to three times this amount."

Mr Moylan said, while high turnover could be costly, moderate turnover was healthy.

"The challenge for employers is to balance the cost of turnover with the need to inject the organisation with new talent and fresh ideas."

WITH the skills shortage and the nation's lowest unemployment in 33 years, a new imperative has arrived - people are more important than the product.

It's now not only important to keep the staff you want, but to keep them happy as well since any fall in a worker's performance due to unhappiness on the job inevitably means lost revenue and opportunities as well as extra costs.

"Regardless of the industry concerned, employees represent the human capital that is critical to an organisation's success," Dr Tony Travaglione, from the University of Sydney's Workplace Research Centre, said.

He was one of eight presenters at a conference held in Sydney last month on happiness and well-being at work.

While companies are under pressure to improve productivity and cut costs, this resulted in "half as many people being paid twice as much to produce three times more", he said.

The result meant staff were being burnt out as well as an adverse impact on their home lives and personal relationships.

According to the annual KPMG Private Companies Survey, a major challenge for private companies was attracting suitably qualified workers, with 47.7 per cent citing it as a problem. It found that 18.5 per cent of businesses said retaining staff was also a challenge.

Dr Travaglione said companies needed to develop strategies to reduce workplace tension while still improving efficiency, as well as strategies that would achieve a healthier and more supportive work environment for managers.

"The challenge for employers and managers is that they think they know this and so don't need to do anything about it. People don't put in the amount of thought that they should.

"If a worker is not happy, it will have an impact on their wellbeing. If you can get the happiness right, you'll have have healthier work force."

Dr Travaglione said money played a part in workplace happiness, but only to a degree.

"You need a certain level of money to reach a base level of happiness," he said. "If you go to work and get paid a miserable salary then you're going to be unhappy no matter what.

"Once you get a fair and reasonable salary, additional money doesn't see additional levels of happiness. And then you can get to the point where your happiness level starts to drop when you get even more money."

He said this was because expectations outside the work environment changed, such as a worker