The Supervisor As Chief Retention Officer

Crisis at a small or large scale can bring about permanent changes in an organizations’ workplace. As new practices enter the work environment, remote work becomes the norm, social distancing shifts requirements, mask mandates, your frontline leaders, more than ever play an important part in retention practices.

What is Retention?
"The classic organization is characterized by the command-and-control style of leadership, where power resides in ever-higher positions, levels and titles. It is earmarked by power over people."1. Against the backdrop of global pandemic, civil and political unrest, the time has come to revisit the role of managers that emphasizes coaching and leadership instead of command and control. Managing for Employee retention involves strategic actions to keep employees motivated and focused so they elect to remain employed and fully productive for the benefit of the organization. A comprehensive employee retention program can play a vital role in both attracting and retaining key employees, as well as in reducing turnover and its related costs. All of these contribute to an organization's productivity and overall business performance.
Retention of productive employees is a major concern of HR professionals and business executives. It is more efficient to retain a quality employee than to recruit, train and orient a replacement employee of the same quality. Fairness and transparency are fundamental yet powerful concepts that can make a lasting impression on employees. Employee job satisfaction and engagement factors are key ingredients of employee retention programs. The importance of addressing these factors is obvious but doing so takes time and these tasks are often left for another day. However, the payoff of focusing on employee retention—in terms of increased performance, productivity, employee morale, and quality of work, plus a reduction in both turnover and employee-related problems—is well worth the time and financial investment. The bottom line is that by managing for employee retention, organizations will retain talented and motivated employees who genuinely want to be a part of the company and who are focused on contributing to the organization's overall success.

Hidden Costs of Poor Retention
Often hard to fully calculate, the estimated ranges from a modest 33% of annual salary for replacement (Employee Benefit News) to a very scary 300% of annual salary for replacement (Investopedia). Intangible costs of high turnover include the damage to your organization’s reputation, in the world of social media and Glassdoor detrimental reviews and stats scare away top talent. Multiple issues arise from low productivity to mass-scale disengagement as employees rally to cover open positions, the organization risks festering resentment and further burnout.

Here is a Cape Go Fly
Seek to make your supervisor your Chief Retention Officer. The trust is placed in the supervisor, that leader closest to the work. These supervisors have many touchpoints throughout the employee life cycle that may positively impact retention; from recruiting, hiring/onboarding, and terminations.
Often outstanding employees are rewarded with promotions into leadership. With little more than a handshake and well wishes to make them successful, they struggle to translate their technical expertise and tactical execution into leadership. As senior leaders, we have literally promoted them to an operational rooftop asking them to jump to the leadership rooftop without a net. It is when we redefine the role of supervisor to include leveraging performance management as a retention tactic and taking a human-centric holistic approach to employee experience continuum (from interview to orientation to development) we are walking them off the precarious edge of career disaster.

Supervisors can connect their teams directly to the noble cause of the organization, remove barriers, foster psychological safety, improve engagement, and ultimately positively impact retention. It with these changes, in addition to the handshake, and well wishes we give them a cape made of new skills and teach them to fly. At that point, they are SUPER-visors who can deliver retention improvements and positively impact the bottom line.

In Summary
In summary, high turnover can be extremely expensive for organizations and perpetuate an ongoing cycle of chaos. Developing innovative TRM programs is crucial to creating a thriving organization in the newest normal. Taking a fresh look at the untapped potential of your leaders closest to the employee is our proposal: your supervisors. We are not suggesting that leaders ADD to their workload, we are proposing concepts and tactics that can be implemented in the short and long term that retain them and help them retain their teams and wellbeing.

This engaging webinar focuses on both evidence-based principles and practical takeaways. Attendees will leave with several practical tools they may apply the minute the webinar is over.

Best practices in talent retention management (TRM)

• Key first steps in creating a strong recruitment and retention strategy

Exploit the untapped potential of your supervisor as a chief retention officer

• Recognize the opportunities to support supervisors in this new influential perspective, and brainstorm strategies for helping them lead post-crisis, and mitigate future risk of turn-over

Course Level - Participants should have a basic knowledge of talent management and concepts of turnover and retention.

• The executive perspective presented is at an Intermediate level
• Frontline immediate action items are Basic/Fundamental

Are you curious about how an existing role can effectively improve and boost retention across your organization? Do you desire tips to equip your HR team and senior leaders to cultivate a strong frontline of human-centric chief retention officers? Learn from speakers, in-house practitioners, and researchers who have developed award-winning books and solutions worldwide. They will reveal key drivers of retention from a human-centric approach; demonstrating how empowering your frontline supervisor may positively impact employee experience in turn reducing the risk of turnover and regrettable loss.
The innovative fresh perspective builds on the tried-and-true key organizational practices: empowerment, meaningful work; recognition, feedback, and growth. We explore beyond the usually associated retention aspects of the employee life cycle. Identifying where the supervisor may positively impact retention from recruiting, hiring/onboarding, and terminations.

The BIG question: What is does Supervisor as Chief Retention Officer mean?

• Why this new perspective?
• Redefine the role of supervisor 
• Communication
• Accountability
• Performance Management as Retention Tactic
• Employee Experience Continuum (from interview to orientation to development)

During this webinar we expect a lively discussion on the leader’s role in retention, specifically asking what are the leader attributes as they pertain to retention? For example, with the high level of burnout and compassion fatigue occurring, a leader must leverage a keen interpersonal and emotional intelligence skillset.
We will discuss how supervisors can connect their teams directly to the noble cause of the organization, remove barriers, foster psychological safety, improve engagement and ultimately positively impact retention.

Senior Leaders/Executives – Decision makes

• Chief Learning Officer
• Chief Talent Management Officer
• Chief Human Resource Officer
• Chief People Officer

Strategic execution

• Talent Development Directors
• Training and Development Directors
• Organizational Development Consultants
• Organizational Development Directors
• Human Resource Business Partners
• Human Resource Directors
• Human Resource Recruiting

Tactical operations

• HR Managers
• Learning specialists
• Recruiters
• Talent Management Professionals
• Training Managers

Individual Professional Development

• New leaders and managers
• Early careerists

William J. Rothwell, PhD, DBA, SPHR, SHRM-SCP, CPTD Fellow, RODC, FLMI is a Distinguished Professor in the
Workforce Education and Development program in the Department of Learning and Performance Systems at the
Pennsylvania State University, University Park campus.
Work Experience
Dr. Rothwell worked full-time in human resources, training and Organization Development in both government (Illinois Office of Auditor General) and in a multinational company (American Brands, #48 on the Fortune 500 list) from 1979 until he joined Penn State University as a professor to head up a graduate program in Human Resource Development/Organization Development He has been a consultant for over 50 multinational companies. Among his many clients are Motorola University China, Ford Motor Company, General Motors, Siemens, Sony, GM Shanghai, Phillips, Erickson, HP, the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), the American Red Cross, Care, the U.S. Department of Labor, the U.S. Postal Service, and many more. He is President of two consulting firms: (1) Rothwell & Associates, Inc. (a firm that focuses on public speaking online and onsite) and (2) Rothwell & Associates, LLC (a firm that focuses on consulting with an emphasis on succession planning, talent management and related topics). He is also, with his wife, a business owner of The Rothwell Partnership, which controls 10 homes for rent. From 1997 until 2022 he and his wife also owned and operated a personal care
home (Greenhills Village and Assisted Living Residence) for the elderly that was licensed by the State of Pennsylvania for 54 residents and employed 27 full-time and part-time employees.
Education and Professional Certifications 
Dr. Rothwell earned his Bachelor’s degree in English with High Honors and Department Honors from Illinois State University; he earned a Master’s degree and completed all courses for the Ph.D. in English from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; he earned his Master of Arts in Business Administration (MABA) from Sangamon State University (a university since renamed the University of Illinois at Springfield); he earned his Ph.D. with a specialization in Human Resource Development from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; and, in 2022 he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) by the Alliance International University in Dutch Curaçao in the Caribbean. He has also earned multiple professional certifications: the Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR) from the Human Resource Certification Institute; the Society for Human Resource Management Senior Professional in Human Resources (SHRM-SCP); the Registered Organization Development Consultant (RODC) designation from the International Society for
Organization Development and Change; and the Certified Professional in Talent Development (CPTD) Fellow (member of the Hall of Fame) from the Association for Talent Development. He is a Fellow of the Life Management Institute (FLMI) designation based on passing 10 graduate courses in the insurance field. (The latter is essentially a Master’s degree in insurance.)
International Work
Dr. Rothwell has been to China 83 times, to Singapore 32 times, and has visited every continent (except Antarctica) to do training, consulting, college teaching, and research. He has chaired 110 Ph.D. committees at Penn State, has served on doctoral committees at foreign universities in England, China, Australia, and the United Arab Emirates, and is still listed as a visiting professor at Nankai University in Tianjin China, a visiting professor at Shanghai JiaoTong University in Shanghai, and a special speaker at Renmin University in Beijing China. (He taught 10 MBA courses at Nankai University and 10 MBA courses at Beijing University.)
Awards
In 2022 Dr. Rothwell was named a Distinguished Professor in the College of Education, was given the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Organization Development Network, and earned the Global Lifetime Achievement Award by Penn State Global Programs (the university’s highest award for doing work internationally). He received the Distinguished Researcher Award from the College of Education in 2016 and was given the Graduate Faculty Teaching Award in the 2004-2005 academic year. (The teaching award is a single award given to one faculty member on Penn State’s 24 campuses each year.). In 2011 he was given the Association for Talent Development’s Distinguished Contribution to Workplace Learning and Performance Award; in 2016 he received the Best Global Training and Development Leadership Award from the World HRD Congress in India, and in 2014 he was named a Brandlaureate in Malaysia. In 2022 he was given the Lifetime Achievement Award by The OD Network; in 2023 he was inducted into the International Adult and Continuing Education Hall of Fame; in 2024 he was named to Marquis’ Who’s Who in America; and in 2024 he has been notified that he will be given the International Society for Performance Improvement’s (ISPI) Thomas F. Gilbert Distinguished Professional Achievement Award at the 2025
conference. 
Publications and Presentations

Dr. Rothwell has authored, coauthored, edited, or coedited 158 books since 1987 and has delivered over 2,000 professional online and onsite presentations over 30 years in 15 nations. His recent books since 2020 include Succession Planning for Small Business and Family Business, Rethinking Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, High-Performance Coaching for Managers, Organization Development (OD) Interventions: Executing Effective Organizational Change, Virtual Coaching to Improve Group Relationships: Process Consultation Reimagined, Adult Learning Basics 2nd ed., Increasing Learning and Development’s Impact Through Accreditation, The Essential HR Guide for Small Businesses and Startups, and Workforce Development: Guidelines for Community College Professionals, 2nd ed.