Joy and Re-Recruiting

Written by Ed Cook and Roxanne Brown

You spend days, weeks, sometimes even months recruiting new people to your organization. What if you used some of that energy on your current team? Consider the potential impact of re-recruiting. The clear value is that it will take far less effort to keep your high performers than it will to search for new ones externally; however,  it is all too easy to let this opportunity slip away. After all, these folks are here and doing great work, so they must be happy, right?  Maybe not. At least, it is worth a bit of effort to find out. The organization will definitely expend that energy (and likely more) to find a replacement from outside the organization.

The concept of re-recruiting recognizes a not-so-hidden truth: your best employees are constantly being recruited by competitors. As a manager, you need to proactively remind your team members why they chose your organization in the first place and give them compelling reasons to stay. Therefore, the real advantage lies in cultivating Joy at Work for your team, which recasts re-recruiting from a retention tactic into cultural foundation building.

Neglecting or Nurturing Culture

Re-recruiting will provide value well beyond the one employee. The more significant value is the impact on the culture. This impact builds off the words and actions of all members of the organization. Organizations that say their people are their best asset, but then rarely expend effort to help them feel engaged at work, are not just neglecting their culture; they are hollowing it out. It will be hard to notice. Like a dying tree in the forest, everything will seem fine, but then all at once it won’t. Like the rotting tree, the culture will have the outward signs of something, but the inside is gone. A survey will show rapidly dropping scores for engagement. High-performers will leave, often to “move to an offer they just couldn’t turn down.” Somehow, it has become better to be out of the organization than in it.

The prescription to this cultural decay is Joy at Work, not happiness, which is superficial and certainly not forced fun, which at best is a perk and at worst degrades culture. Joy at Work is not a perk.  It's the nutrient that keeps organizational culture alive and flourishing. When managers actively re-recruit through practices that foster Joy at Work, they're not just preventing attrition; they're cultivating an environment where people choose to stay because work enhances their lives rather than depleting them.

In December 1990, the Academy of Management published “Psychological Conditions of Personal Engagement and Disengagement at Work” by William A. Khan, using “personal engagement” to describe the behavior of employees in terms of the extent to which they are willing to bring in or leave out their personal selves while performing their work. This led to further research and the adoption of the more popular term “employee engagement,” which started a rapid increase in research and writing on the topic. In 1999, Gallup researchers Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman published research findings from thousands of employee opinion surveys collected over 25 years in their book, First, Break All the Rules. The surveys that followed became the Gallup Q12, which is now an often-cited marker of employee engagement around the world. 

As a term, “employee engagement” is often used in organizations, but to what purpose? Surveys are administered, results tallied, graphs drawn, but, too often, the meetings to review these are about empty congratulating when the scores go up, “this just reflects the great culture we have built,” or explaining away when the scores go down, “this is just an indication of the the stress from [insert the reason: COVID, the merger, tariffs, back-to-office mandates etc].” How often is the conversation among managers about what to do next? Either actions to keep the gains or actions to reverse the losses.

Re-recruiting: Vitamin or Painkiller

When presenting managers with a suggestion to engage with their employees, especially high-performers, with an approach of re-recruiting them, it is not surprising that they may feel burdened with yet one more thing. It can feel like an admonishment to take their vitamins.  It is, however, most certainly a painkiller. The difficulty is that the pain may be so chronic that the manager barely recognizes it. Just as people learn to live with back pain, managers learn to live with high-performers walking out the door. As employee engagement declines, organizational outcomes become harder to achieve. Pain is present, whether felt or not.

The prescription is not more programs or initiatives. It does not require wholesale changes in manager behavior. Instead, managers can make small changes by embedding Joy at Work practices into existing routines through two complementary approaches: clarifying their Leadership Intention and implementing Employee Engagement practices that generate Joy at Work.

The Leadership Intention is a statement by the manager as to how they want it to be on the team. It flows from their best team experience. It is a simple set of statements that follow from this phrase: “I’ll know we are truly working together toward successful outcomes when…” It is a clear statement of what success for the team looks like beyond just the list of goals and KPIs and OKRs. It is the prescription for Joy at Work on the team. You can see an example of the turnaround that a Leadership Intention made on a team living in “the pit of despair,” which moved them to a stunning success by improving the foundation upon which Joy at Work could grow.  

Employee Engagement practices are the typically small things that are done in and around the routines of the week that help employees. It is not necessary to make large efforts here. Small exchanges in and around the routines of the week can have dramatic impacts.

Employee Engagement: A guide for busy managers

An engaged employee has an attachment to their own job role.  For them, work is part of a life well lived. A 2022 review of the academic work on employee engagement by Gabriele Boccoli, Luca Gastaldi, and  Mariano Corso titled “The evolution of employee engagement: Towards a social and contextual construct for balancing individual performance and wellbeing dynamically,” provides a framework to achieve employee engagement. Managers can increase employee engagement by engaging employees in three areas: Social interaction, Social Exchange, and Social Recognition.

Social Interaction: This is the interaction that all employees have with each other. It gets to the fundamental human need to be part of a group. Managers can create forums for social interaction.  These do not have to be in person, but when creating an in-person event, consider what you can do in person that is not possible virtually.

1. Long-term problem-solving is a good candidate for an in-person interaction with the team. Managers who make the session mostly about getting the input of their employees are re-recruiting them by engaging them in the future of the team. Managers will know they are doing it right when employees participate actively and managers speak no more than anyone else.
2. Team coffee or lunch is a simple way to bring the group together and create an interaction that is very difficult to replicate virtually. Managers are re-recruiting their employees by creating bonds that provide value. Managers will know they are doing it right when employees ask when the next one is and how they can help.

Social Exchange: This is the gain that every human gets through working in teams. That gain can be received from others or given to others. It is the fundamental reason organizations exist: no one person can do the work by themselves.

1. One meeting a month with direct employees, focused solely on that individual’s growth, creates an environment where managers are re-recruiting their employees by making the meeting about them and not about work. Managers will know they are doing it right when employees come loaded with topics to discuss about themselves and not about tasks.
2. Routinely encouraging employees to find one thing that they can either eliminate from their work, make more efficient, or delegate opens up their capacity to grow. Managers who do the same and delegate tasks to their employees to help them develop are re-recruiting their employees by showing confidence in their ability to take on tasks that the manager previously did. Managers will know they are doing it right when employees start asking to take tasks off the manager’s list of things to do.

Social Recognition: This is the value that humans get when their work is explicitly valued by their managers and peers.

1. Sending 1-3 handwritten thank you notes to employees each week or each month shows them their accomplishments are noticed. Managers are re-recruiting employees by showing that they appreciate the work they do. Managers will know they are doing it right when they look forward to doing it. Managers will know they are doing it right when employees have the notes are their desk are unsolicited go out of their way to say thanks. 
2. Managers can walk around the office and pass out lollipops (or any other trivial treat) while they ask employees what they are most proud of doing in the last few weeks. Managers are re-recruiting their employees by creating a team culture that people want to stay in. Managers will know they are doing it right when people start referring to it as “Lollipop Day.”

These are just examples. All managers will need to find the activities that are authentic to themselves and appropriate for the culture. Re-recruiting cannot be a wholly separate set of activities. It must fit into the regular routines of the organization.

Being versus Doing

As with all things regarding management of people, it is not WHAT you are doing but HOW you do it. Two things for managers to consider:

1. What is your intention in doing any of these suggestions? If it is simply to check the box, then not much good will happen, and it can even be negative, as employees will rapidly see through the facade of good intentions. Look again at this example of a Leadership Intention that changed the culture of a team that was struggling. Note, the work never got easier. Change happened because the leader changed first.
2. Note closely not just what you are doing, but how you are being.  Passing out lollipops is a plastic and pointless act unless the manager’s intention is to engage employees, and the way they are being, reflects that intention.

It is not necessary for a manager to rework all their routines, but it may be imperative to do something. The only way to know is to try. Try one thing.  Here are a few questions to help. 

1. Which of your employees are at the highest risk for leaving?
2. What would each team member sacrifice if they left tomorrow?
3. What development opportunities have you provided in the last 90 days?
4. When was the last time you had an honest career conversation with each direct report?
5. What is one joy-depleting practice you could eliminate this week?
6. What brings each of your employees Joy at Work?

The answers to these questions will tell you whether you're re-recruiting or just hoping your best people stay.