On Topic: Appreciation, value and more of what employees want

Once upon a time I had this boss who insisted that I show up each morning at 7:30.

After all, he reasoned, he was there at 7:30 every day, hefting large amounts of caffeine, so I should be, too.

I would point out that none of the writers I supervised were in until 8 at the earliest and, as we didn't want to pay them extra, that likely was the soonest we'd ever see them. In fact, hardly anyone in the entire home office of some 7,800 souls was there before 8:30.

In addition, the various folk we interviewed for our corporate publications - spread as they were across the country - surely would be nowhere to be found at 7:30 Eastern Time.

Besides, I suspect he just wanted company.

But more than once I also wondered: Does he not really get what we do here?

A general appreciation of your employees' tasks - even if you personally couldn't perform those same duties quite as well - is one of the key items that turns up on lists of tips for retaining talent in today's shifting world of work.

In a December 2012 column on the Forbes website, contributor and N2growth Managing Director Mike Myatt contended that more 30 percent of employees believe they'll be working someplace else within a year. One reason is more than 70 percent “don't feel appreciated or valued by their employer,” he wrote.

Moreover, a survey by MSW Research and Dale Carnegie Training suggests that workers - especially those millennials upon whom we seem to have pinned so many hopes to keep future economic engines running - no longer subscribe to the sentiment that, gee, they're just so happy to have any old job.

I'm not certain if I'm convinced of that latter claim, but 70 percent is a scary number. So here are a few hands-on suggestions, culled from a variety of sources, that might help to keep the folk you've taken time to recruit and train on the job.

Use the smarts you have, sometimes:

When a story-planning meeting of editors was called for a small chain of newspapers where I worked a few years back, I asked our publisher if I could bring along a couple reporters. I valued their insights and, besides, I'd just tell them everything discussed in the meeting anyway.

He asked if I wouldn't rather “filter” the main points to them later.

My reply was we'd hired really smart people. Why wouldn't we want them involved in strategy? (Yes, they got to attend.)

Myatt noted that many bosses fail to give their talented people a voice. If you don't listen to them, he wrote, “someone else will.”

So maybe, when appropriate, we should ask.

You can set the destination, but they might have some ideas on how to draw the map:

One reporter never tired of citing a passage from Shelby Foote's “The Civil War”: During the battle of Gettysburg, Robert E. Lee reportedly ordered Lieutenant General Richard Stoddert Ewell to “Take that hill, if practicable.”

As it turned out, Ewell didn't “take that hill” - he apparently didn't think such action was “practicable” - but you get the point.

As that reporter wanted me to understand, the manager indeed should set the goals. But the people on the ground might have some worthwhile notions on how and when best to achieve them.

Common sense looks good on most everyone:

Robert J. Murray, global chief executive for iProspect, a marketing agency, told the New York Times of how, earlier in his career at a consulting firm, he'd spend three weeks on a project only to have it trashed by an up-until-then-absent boss at 5:30 on the day before it was to be presented.

More than once, Murray and his group would stay the night reworking the presentation to have it ready the next morning. This is did not make for loyal worker bees.

The lesson here is more than simply to stay engaged.

Back at that big corporation where my boss kept nagging about my not sharing early morning chats over coffee, a director once called me and one of our video producers into his office.

Great news, he proclaimed: He'd chosen us to develop a new promotional video.

He then cheerily told us we had until tomorrow at this time to finish our prototype. That way he could give it to one of the vice presidents, who'd have two weeks to look it over.

(Said vice president, the director pointed out, had not requested a new promotional video. This would be a surprise.)

The video producer hit, as they say, the roof. He had a crushing load of other projects that were due now - and certainly it would make more sense if we had two weeks and the vice president had 24 hours to watch it.

The director didn't budge on the time frame. So the two of us carved out 30 minutes that afternoon to hurriedly contemplate how to proceed, I then wrote some perky copy and the producer did his best to find some stock footage and make it all look and sound pretty.

The next day the video was duly handed over to the director, who in turn passed it upstairs.

And we never heard another word about it. No promotional video ever materialized.

The moral? If you're the passenger, on occasion it makes sense to listen to the driver. That person just might have some good ideas on how to get where you want to go.

You never know.