Guest Post: Manager Effectiveness

Last week, my company provided me with a training session on Manager Effectiveness. We discussed ways to motivate our employees and help keep our top performers at Uncle H. This is a tough thing to do in China, where people never leave their employer just for a 10-20% increase - it's always at least 30% and usually 50% and often 100% more money. How do you convince someone to work for half the pay they could get somewhere else?

It was reiterated several times at this session that the best (some say only) measure of a manager's effectiveness is "regrettable turnover". That is, an effective manager rarely has a valued employee leave.

Well, I joined the China Benefits Consulting team (called RFM in our lingo) last October. This is a team of 12 in Shanghai, about 20 across China. Two employees left in October. I didn't get the chance to know them well enough to identify them as "regrettable" or otherwise. Anyway I wasn't the manager. Yet. Then the manager left in December. Not my fault, I hope. But then I became the manager.

Two more left in January. Let's just call one of them "regrettable". Two more were announced today. Both regrettable. Only one was a direct report here in Shanghai, the other was in Beijing.

So, since I became a manager of a team of 11 in December, I have had 2 "regrettable turnovers". As the leader (in name) of the Greater China Benefits team, I have had 3 "regrettable turnovers" in a team of 20. In 3 months. Annualize that rate. A regrettable turnover rate of almost 80% for my direct reports, and 60% for my broader team. Of course it is impossible to reach such a high rate because only so many people can be considered "regrettable" when they leave. I'm pushing the upper bound.

This does not leave my confidence in my "manager effectiveness" at a terribly high level. Apparently some of my team noticed this today as I was leaving shortly after announcing the latest departures. Tonight at 11 pm I received the following text message from a couple of the newer members of our team:

Hi Dave, sorry can't do something to help u retain our experienced colleague. I know u r innocent. But we r still very appreciate ur committment on our team. We also have the confidence to face the challenge before us. Remember, nothing is impossible. Y-- and me r gonna work close with u to defend our RFM's glorious. Hope u feel better now! Good nite! J&Y

I do feel better.