Managing Talent Retention

Participant Selection - a Crucial First Step to Collecting Relevant Retention Data

The first step to ensuring your retention data collection techniques will result in useful information is to identify, select, and invite the appropriate individuals to participate.  Whether you are using questionnaires, retention surveys, interviews or focus groups to collect this information, if you don’t include the appropriate participants the information you receive may not provide you with a clear picture of the retention issues your company faces.  Including the right participants means that the information you obtain will be useful and relevant to your company’s specific retention issues.

To begin, identify and select individuals to participate who best reflect the group of individuals for whom a problem exists, and a solution needs to be created.  For example, if the identified problem is that technology employees leave the organization prior to their second-year anniversary, then technology employees who are soon to meet their second-year anniversary should be represented in the chosen data collection technique.  In another example, if the identified problem is that individual contributors recently promoted to management positions are leaving the company, then all recently promoted new managers should be represented in the data collection technique. 

Include at least 10 percent of the total researched population in the technique.  For example, if there are 1,000 employees who represent the target audience and you are conducting a focus group, plan to include 100 individuals in the focus groups. Invite 10-15 participants to ensure attendance of 6-12 participants of each focus group, the ideal focus group size.  For techniques that are easier to administer such as questionnaires and retention surveys, a larger percentage of the researched population can be included for even more accurate results. 

Nominal Group Technique - Combining Data from Multiple Focus Groups

A third format for conducting focus groups is the nominal group technique.  This approach allows unbiased input to be collected efficiently and accurately, and input is solicited from participants in a carefully structured format. 

This approach begins with a specific retention issue being presented to the group, for example, “Today, we’d like to hear from you – why you believe top sales performers, those consistently within the top 10% on closed sales, are leaving the company at a higher rate than the rest of the sales department.”  Participants in the focus group then make a list of the specific reasons they believe this is happening and then share their lists with the group in a round robin format while all of the ideas are recorded and posted around the room. 

Next the lists are consolidated and integrated and the participants are asked to identify which ten items they consider to be the most important causes of the retention issue, in order of importance.  After the lists are completed each participant reveals his or her number one item, and ten points are recorded next to that item on the list for each person that has selected it as number one.  Next, the number two reason is identified, and nine points are allotted for each person that selected that item as the number two reason.  This continues as each participant reveals their entire top ten list and points are assigned to each cause based upon the rankings the receive. 

Finally, all of the numbers next to each item are totaled and the item with the most points becomes the number one cause of the retention issue.  Generally the top 15 causes are captured and reported as the weighted average cause of the retention issue from that group. 

One of the major advantages of using the Nominal Group Technique is that it allows you to combine information from numerous focus groups to obtain an overall list of the top reasons for the identified retention issue.  Simply combine the final scores for each item identified by the individual focus groups to create a list of the top 15 issues affecting your retention of top talent.

Obtaining Valuable Retention Data - The Ishikawa Diagram

Previously I’ve discussed the basics of conducting an interview focus group to gather information about retention and issues that may be affecting retention within your company.  While this method provides a lot of great input from participants, it can leave the company with a large list of ideas and possible issues to pursue, and can make it difficult to determine which issues are the most important and should take precedence. 

If obtaining a census from your focus group participants is your goal, you may want to consider using an Ishikawa diagram to brainstorm ideas related to the root cause of a problem.  After all ideas about the root causes have been identified, the group narrows the list of causes down to a few through voting.  The Ishikawa diagram, also known a fishbone diagram was named after Kaoru Ishikawa, who used the diagram to help teams identify cause and effect. 

Conducting a focus group using this process begins by carefully articulating the problem that needs to be solved.  After that participants brainstorm as many ideas as possible, categorizing them into specific “cause categories” that affect the specific retention issue, such as People, Materials, Environment, etc.  After all ideas are exhausted the group then votes on the causes they believe are most instrumental to resolving the identified problem, and thus, the top priorities are identified, leaving the company with a specific list of solutions to consider. 

Obtaining Valuable Retention Data - The Group Interview

There are several strategies that companies can use to obtain information about what is causing employees to leave the company.  Of these strategies focus groups are a great way for companies to solicit qualitative data on a specific topic or area of concern, and allow the facilitator to probe for more detail then what can be provided through a questionnaire. 

While there are several different ways to conduct a focus group, one of the methods used most often is a carefully crafted set of interview questions to ask the group.  Group interviews are a great method for gathering feedback directly from those that may be affected by such issues and can be very helpful in either identifying which issues should be researched further or validating the issues identified by other data collection methods. 

In Social Research Methods: Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches, Lawrence Newman identifies varies categories of questions that can be include in this type of focus group:

• Behavior-based questions that uncover the current behaviors of an individual
• Attitudes, Opinions, and Beliefs questions that reveal what someone thinks about a particular topic.
• Personal Characteristics that help to identify a particular group and potentially segment their responses.
• Participant Expections.
• Self-classification or Self-perceptions that participants have about themselves.
• Knowledge that participants currently posses or are lacking. 

Identify the series of questions to ask the focus groups and organize these into an Interview Guide, with specific questions grouped around common themes and ideas so that topics are not scattered and unfocused.  Ideally, broader conceptual questions, such as questions about specific behaviors, habits, and beliefs, should be asked at the start of the group interview, followed by more specific questions about challenges faced in the participant’s current role. Questions to get input on possible solutions should be asked at the end of the focus group.