Retain Your Best Talent with the Right Tools and Technology

Slalom can help you empower your people with Google Cloud technology

Are you doing everything you can to keep your employees engaged? Of all the efforts necessary to thrive in turbulent times — like the ones we’re currently experiencing — giving your employees the best experience should be high on your list of priorities. Why? Finding great talent is always challenging, but in the current environment, where some outlets are reporting that an astonishing 96% of workers will be looking to change jobs in 2023, it makes sense to take steps to make your workplace as employee-friendly as possible.

And this doesn’t necessarily mean offering perks like gourmet lunches or Ping-Pong tables. Helping employees feel engaged in their work by giving them the right tools to be productive and contribute in meaningful ways can go a long way in creating a culture that makes your best talent want to stay.

“Ensuring your employees have the right tools to do their job well can benefit their productivity, but perhaps even more importantly, it may affect their job satisfaction … The upfront cost to provide employees with the proper tools and equipment might be expensive, but this is likely to be offset in the long run if the tools increase their performance and productivity.” — Forbes, Why It’s Important To Equip Your Employees With The Right Tools, February 2022

In this third installment of our Thriving in Turbulence series, we’ll take a closer look at what’s at stake when it comes to retaining your employees. We’ll also explore the ways Google Cloud tools and Slalom’s expertise can help you promote the kind of productivity and performance that will benefit both your organization and your workers.

Talent and know-how are priceless assets

Focusing on the needs of your employees is simply a sound practice, regardless of whether you’re recording stellar results or having to do some belt-tightening. That also goes for the practices we covered in the previous installments of this series, including cutting costs and optimizing your spending habits, and making better use of your data to gain valuable insights. But in this climate, losing valuable, knowledgeable employees is a real risk and one that must be proactively addressed.

Consider the following issues that can arise when an employee decides to leave your organization:

• People often take valuable knowledge with them when they leave a job. If the tasks, processes, projects, and initiatives the departing employees are involved in aren’t well documented, some of that knowledge may be lost for good.
• The morale of the remaining team members may suffer when someone leaves. They’re not only losing a colleague and collaborator, but some of that person’s responsibilities may be added to the remaining team members’ workloads.
• Will the departure of your employee coincide with the loss of that employee’s customer accounts? Your relationships with external stakeholders could suffer if an employee responsible for cultivating and maintaining those relationships leaves.
• Productivity could also suffer when employees leave. It often takes a significant amount of time to recruit, hire, and train new employees. While all that’s going on, and the new person is learning the role and establishing relationships — both internally and externally — vital activities may have to be put on hold.

Of course, there’s also the financial considerations of backfilling when an employee leaves. According to Gallup, “The cost of replacing an individual employee can range from one-half to two times the employee’s annual salary.” For US businesses, this amounts to about $1 trillion per year for voluntary turnover.

Keep your employees engaged and productive

What can you do to keep your employees productive in times of reduced workforce? As hinted at above, an important part of this is providing them with the best tools for the work at hand and giving them the support they need to use those tools to their full potential.

Take your developers, for example. IT teams have been under tremendous pressure in the last few years. They’ve been tasked with delivering all the applications the newly virtual workforces need to do their jobs efficiently and effectively. Technology providers such as Google are trying to lessen that burden by helping developers create and launch apps faster to satisfy all workers’ needs, no matter where they sit.

One of the ways Google makes this experience better is with Anthos. Anthos allows developers to spend more time on important tasks, such as coding, testing, and experimenting, rather than on deployment or configuration activities. Anthos provides centralized functionality, such as managing clusters, automating policy and security for applications, and monitoring traffic for performance tracking against a variety of metrics.

Anthos also allows you to run your workloads across cloud and on-premises environments and provides user-friendly dashboards for a “single pane of glass” view across your entire organization. With this consistent experience across all environments, Anthos helps eliminate redundant work for your developers, which, according to a study conducted by Forrester, may “enhance employee experience, potentially helping [organizations] better attract, hire, and retain employees.”

Even when employees have the right tools, they also often need support and guidance on how to get the most out of those tools. With free training options as well as more deep-dive training and certification courses, Google Cloud gives your employees vital skills for working more efficiently while also helping your teams demonstrate and validate their expertise with Google Cloud technology, thereby empowering them to advance their careers.

Though a lot of employees will see the introduction of productivity-enhancing tools as a good thing, others may need additional support when it comes to adopting new technologies and practices. Because change often leads to uncertainty — as so many organizations are experiencing today — a partner like Slalom is invaluable in helping you navigate these changes. We take a holistic approach to business transformation, considering everything from company culture to customer experience, so your people are not only informed about the changes that are occurring but are also confident in the roles they will play and the value they will contribute. We’ve found this is the best approach for long-term resilience — a trait that will help you thrive, no matter what environment you’re operating in.

Learn more about the steps you can take to maximize your ROI to thrive beyond the bottom line with the help of Slalom and Google Cloud. If you’d like to speak with us about leveraging Google Cloud tools to provide your people with a superior experience, we’re here for you.

Slalom is a global consulting firm that helps people and organizations dream bigger, move faster, and build better tomorrows for all. Learn more and reach out today.