By Mary Tucker, IAEE Senior Communications and Content Manager
Expo! Expo! IAEE’s Annual Meeting & Exhibition 2023 features a three-day educational journey covering seven diverse content tracks, including this hands-on session led by Yvette Simpson titled Quiet Doesn’t Cut It: Why Clear and Consistent Communication Is Key to Retaining Quality Employees. “Quiet” seems to be the predominant workforce buzzword of 2023. It started with “quiet quitting” and has expanded to include “quiet hiring,” “quiet firing,” and most recently, “quiet thriving.”
There are three major factors impacting this trend. With more employees working remotely post-pandemic, communication with staff up, down and across the organizational chart has been extremely limited, inconsistent and unclear. Additionally, generational shifts in the workforce have impacted communication vertically at each level within the organization chart, but especially from the C-suite to the director level, and then again from director level to middle management. Third, economic pressures and massive layoffs have negatively impacted worker confidence, loyalty and motivation.
Traditionally, before the influence of a once-in-a-generation pandemic and a massive generational workforce shift, communication was the foundation of productive employer-employee relations practices and paramount to a healthy, thriving workplace culture. Today, it presents one of the most significant challenges to employee satisfaction and retention.
Clear, consistent communication is the antidote to what has been a very difficult year for employee retention. The cost of “quiet” is significant because employee turnover costs are significant in countless ways, including: lost productivity, engagement, revenue and diminished client relations, brand reputation, and corporate culture.
Yvette will teach participants how to identify the causes and symptoms of “quiet quitting” in their workplace and give them the very real tools to combat this trend. After an informative and enlightening 45-minute presentation, participants will also engage in a 15-minute working session with a real “quiet quitting” scenario to problem solve together in small groups with other industry leaders and where a few select groups will be asked to share their “a-ha’s” or learnings from the group session.
Here, Yvette shares a preview of how participants will benefit from the information presented at Quiet Doesn’t Cut It: Why Clear and Consistent Communication Is Key to Retaining Quality Employees.
In this session, you will deep dive into the three predominant factors impacting workforce retention today. What went into determining these factors as the most crucial in understanding and negotiating the “quiet” phenomenon?
Yvette: These three factors [pandemic, generational shift, economic pressures] have most significantly impacted communication within the workforce in different, but interconnected ways. Our ability to communicate has been limited by a remote workplace, the ways we communicate have shifted as we have welcomed new generations in the workplace, and the importance of communication has increased significantly with the weight of economic pressures on employees and employers.
You will also explore the primary drivers and symptoms of “quiet quitting,” the top workforce trend of 2023 on employee retention. How will this help participants formulate strategies to combat this workforce challenge?
Yvette: Simply put, if you don’t understand the problem, you can’t begin to solve it. There are so many tools and systems that guide and support our work in the employee relations space. But in times like these, we have to go back to our foundation. Yes, we need data and technology to give us information and insight, but that is not a substitute for good, effective, honest and consistent communication. At the end of the day, we are dealing with people. So when you have a confluence of pressures and rapidly shifting circumstances as we do today, systems alone just aren’t enough.
Attendees will also discover the Do’s and Don’ts – the key communication strategies – to combat “quiet quitting.” What is the immediate impact they can expect to experience upon applying these techniques?
Yvette: I love nothing more than a good list of what to do and what to avoid. It helps set the foundation for how to combat a wide range of scenarios. I expect there are some things we just know and have forgotten and others that we’ve never thought about. Participants will appreciate having a few parameters that can be easily applied to the most common situations as they build more comprehensive, specific solutions to their specific workplaces.
What fuels your passion for this subject, and why is this information so relevant in today’s business environment?
Yvette: I’ve been an employment attorney for nearly 20 years and have counseled so many companies across various industries on how to create thriving workplaces and growing businesses. As a career coach, advisor, speaker, and author, I believe in the power of people, especially when they are at their best, doing what they love.
People, aka human resources, are still the most important resource for most, if not all industries. Over the years, with more tools and systems, a lot has changed in the way we do this work. What I’ve realized is that what was old is new again and we should lean into some of the tried and true foundational principles, strategies, and tactics that we have relied on in the past.
