Meet the Psychological Needs of Your People–All Your People | McKinsey

I recently shared an 86-page report by Harvard Business School, Building From the Bottom Up, that explored retention strategies for organizations’ frontline workers. These workers, which represent 44 percent or 53 million workers in America alone, are often the foundation of many firms’ operating models, yet they receive less attention in terms of retention efforts. Instead, many firms accept that lower-wage and frontline jobs will always have high turnover and that this reality is just the cost of doing business. But as more frontline workers leave their organizations, the direct and indirect costs caused by constant churn will be magnified. In this new McKinsey article, data show that the needs of lower-wage earners often go unmet relative to higher earners. The article provides ideas on what business leaders can do to address the psychological needs of their front-line employees. One finding to note is that for people (in the survey) in all occupations at all levels of income, the most important drivers of their job satisfaction were interpersonal relationships and having an interesting job. As managers of frontline workers identify what is most important to the individuals on their team, I am resharing this highly viewed INSEAD article, which includes 18 questions managers can draw from to help identify what workers value the most.