Invest In Your People

At least half of the U.S. workforce consists of quiet quitters! (Gallup) Can you believe that? Fifty percent!

If you attended our webinar, Quiet Quitting: Reengage & Keep Your People, you learned that 67% of Quiet Quitters state burnout as the reasoning. This is a massive challenge and overwhelming for employers. Quiet quitting can result in eroded relationships, team dissatisfaction, increased conflicts, and contagious disengagement within the team.

Employee turnover is a significant challenge for employers in general, add quiet quitting to the mix and that challenge increases even more. Employee turnover results in a loss in productivity, and having to recruit, onboard, and train new employees. We all know this process is EXPENSIVE and takes a lot of time and energy! Not to mention the impact it has on company culture and morale.

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‍Once we hire great people and high performers, how do we keep them? ‍

We keep them by investing in their future!

Practically speaking, at our company we offer a professional development fund as part of total compensation packages for employees. Each year, each employee gets between $1,500 and $2,500 to use for professional development (conferences, trainings, programs, etc.). We strongly encourage our employees to focus on their betterment as professionals. We want to set our employees up for future success based on their own unique goals.  

Here are some specific ways our employees have used their development money: Dale Carnegie Trainings, Harvard Business School Online Course, FMWF Chamber Leadership Program, United Way 35 under 35 Women’s Leadership Program, AICPA Annual Conference, and industry-specific learning, just to name some.  

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We also keep our great people by showing them the way.

At Light, we talk often and openly about our long-term goals. We have a roadmap exercise to encourage employees to think realistically about their future aspirations, writing goals down along with measurable benchmarks we can crush along the way to help employees find success.  

Of course, once we find great talent, we want to hold onto them forever! What if that doesn’t align with their dreams and goals? We want to set them up for success, no matter where their roadmap takes them. If that won’t happen with our company, we will do what we can to set them up for success elsewhere.

Intentionality is a big part of who we are. One way we live this out is at the start of every year when we each choose one word for the following year to motivate and inspire us. A few of the words for 2023 are: discernment, connection, joy, and intent. With so many options of worthy things we can invest our time and energy on, it’s important to hone in on one word to focus our energy. Doing this exercise as a team helps us check in and be accountable to ourselves and to each other.  

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These are just a few practical ideas to help you get started as you brainstorm different ways to invest in your people. Watch the most recent webinar for more in-depth information about quiet quitting. If we can invest in the growth of our people and give them space to be who God intended for them to be, we're hopeful that the remaining 50% of our workforce will reengage and ignite passion in the workplace once again.  

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