By Jim Giacobbe
As the CEO of the United Solutions CUSO, I make a point of interviewing every new employee we hire and every employee who decides to leave the company.
We have a great culture at United Solutions, and I take personal responsibility in making sure we are hiring smart employees with positive attitudes that can be promoted throughout our organization. A rising tide lifts all boats. I don’t want to look back three years from now and wonder what happened to my happy and positively motivated staff.
To that point, it bothers me when a departing employee fills out our exit interview with items that could have improved his or her experience at United Solutions. I like to think that our management team promotes a very safe and open environment where employees feel free to share their ideas and concerns.
Recently, a very good employee resigned in order to assist her family in another city. She was not in a position that could easily transition into a remote employee. On her exit interview she laid it all out there, making suggestions that might improve life for her fellow employees, and making suggestions to improve service. When I asked her why she had not come forward with these ideas earlier, she said she just wasn’t sure.
Unfortunately, this probably was not the first time this had happened, but I wanted to make sure it was the last. I called our human resources department and asked them to have every employee fill out an exit interview and hand it in by the end of the week. I even agreed, begrudgingly, to allow them to be anonymous.
In the end, we received each of the exit interviews and published the responses anonymously on our intranet. We want our employees to feel empowered to speak freely and know that we value their opinions. There isn’t a magic wand that we wave around here that creates good ideas and shows us the way forward. Each employee is responsible to themselves first, and then to the rest of the company to help provide guidance and direction.
The exercise was a great success, and I strongly urge you to “fire” all of your employees before the end of March…or at least collect their exit interviews.
Jim Giacobbe is CEO of United Solutions, Tallahassee, Fla. For info: www.unitedsolutions.coop.