Staying for the Right Reasons: How to Engage Employees Who Feel Stuck

Trends in the job market indicate that employees are staying put in their current jobs, but they aren’t necessarily happy about this stability. Rather, some feel stuck in their current roles with few opportunities on the horizon.

How can you turn this trend of lower turnover into an asset by creating a workplace where employees are engaged and want to stay? Offer your current staff opportunities to improve their skills and provide a trustworthy atmosphere with caring leadership. Help them stay for good reasons, not for lack of good alternatives.

Reasons to Stay: Upskilling

Consider what the people on your team will need to meet the demands of the next 3 to 5 years. As you and your leadership team think about the needs in your sector, and how your organization may need to change to meet future opportunities, what are some specific areas where you want to expand the thinking and skill base of your current team?

Upskilling in human resources is a workplace trend that focuses on improving employees' skills to help them be more effective in their current jobs and also to grow into new roles. Upskilling programs can help close skill gaps, keep employees engaged, and reduce turnover.

Investing in the future of your staff demonstrates that you value their commitment to the mission of your organization and what they uniquely bring to their team. Sharing a vision of the future that includes their growth and participation can move an employee from someone who stays reluctantly to an engaged advocate for your organization.

While you might embrace the concept of upskilling, finding the resources for this investment in your people can be daunting, especially in a small organization. Where can you find resources to support this commitment?

In a small nonprofit ministry or church, look at the circle of people who are connected to your vision and mission. Consider the professional skills of those on your elder board, key volunteers, or donors. You can leverage their skills in an advisory capacity to supplement your own leadership capacity and find opportunities for your staff to learn from a wider circle of leaders.

Connect with peers in your church network, or a nonprofit association, or in the marketplace, such as through C12, for Christian business leaders. This networking can expand your thinking about particular subject areas for upskilling, and also help you find resources to recommend to your staff. Right Now Media has video topics relevant to many nonprofit ministries. For example, they currently offer an on-demand webinar on Ministry in the Age of AI.

As you find resources to share with your staff, beware of the laundry-list approach. It’s more effective to require teams to engage with a few resources that they can discuss together than to provide a list of multiple online courses or videos and hope people find something useful.

Some upskilling topics are ones that you might want your whole team to participate in, such as understanding and using AI tools. However, other resources might be based on an individual’s interest and growth path, such as project management training or budgeting—topics that can be addressed through resources such as LinkedIn Learning.

An intentional emphasis on upskilling and providing growth paths for your employees is part of Uplifting Growth, one of the eight Flourish Factors identified by Best Christian Workplaces as having an impact on employee engagement.

Reasons to Stay: Trust in Leadership

Upskilling is important in our rapidly changing world. And since the pace of change is not slowing down, change fatigue is another factor for employee engagement. Those who have stayed with one organization over time have experienced changes due to the global pandemic, changes in workplace expectations, and changes in technology, in addition to changes in their particular sector.

Change fatigue can undermine trust in leadership, particularly if communication patterns are vague or inconsistent. In a low-trust environment, change fatigue can become resentment and lead to disengaged employees. They may not be leaving for other jobs, but disengaged employees who stay due to inertia or lack of alternatives can infect the workplace environment for those who are engaged and committed.

Inspirational leaders have the opportunity to reinforce the vision and mission of an organization in the face of changes. They can rally teams to rise to meet the challenges if people trust that the organization is well-managed and that leaders have integrity and care about their employees.

The recent State of the Christian Workforce report by Best Christian Workplaces highlighted issues of trust and leadership for engaged employees. The two questions with the highest correlation to employee engagement were related to Inspirational Leadership:

• My organization is well-managed.
• Leaders at my organization model fairness and integrity.

Reasons to Stay: Organizational Health

How do you know the trust level of employees in your organization? Do your employees perceive that they are being cared for and offered growth opportunities? The Best Christian Workplaces’ Employee Engagement Survey provides information on the overall health of your workplace, and also specific details on eight factors of a flourishing workplace, including Inspirational Leadership and Uplifting Growth, which are the focus of this article.

If you’ve never participated in an Employee Engagement Survey, it’s a great way to assess the current state of your workplace health. Along with diagnostic information, much like an annual physical, your customized report will include support for developing an action plan to improve trust and other factors that support a flourishing workplace. Many organizations find that an annual survey helps keep them on track and continues to provide value in regular assessment and growth. If you choose to survey infrequently, then your information on workplace health can quickly become out-of-date in a changing environment. What was true three years ago in your workplace has probably changed over time.

In addition, investing in Leadership 360 assessments for your team will align leadership behaviors and skills with your organization's needs, resulting in a healthier and more engaged workplace culture. Our core model is based on the three overriding leadership characteristics that support the development of the ideal Christian servant leader: Character, Competence, and Chemistry.

Provide your employees with good reasons to stay because of trust in Inspirational Leadership and Uplifting Growth, which will lessen their change fatigue and provide opportunities for meaningful professional development. This will help them stay committed to the mission and vision of your organization and bring their full energy to their work.

More Reasons to Stay

In a culture with widespread loneliness, relational connections in a workplace provide a strong tie to keep employees engaged and committed to your organization. Connection with a caring supervisor and positive teamwork are factors in day-to-day job satisfaction that can give your staff good reasons to stay engaged.

Several recent Best Christian Workplaces articles have provided more information on creating a caring workplace and human-centric connections. Read these for more ideas on providing additional reasons for your employees to stay:

• Connecting the Dots: 7 Steps to a Connected and Engaged Workforce
• How to Build Community in a Virtual World: Fostering Connection and Care in Remote Workplaces

Next Steps

Do you sense that some of your employees are staying in their jobs but aren’t fully engaged in the mission of your organization? Take positive steps to provide growth opportunities and reinforce trust so your employees will want to stay with your organization for good reasons.

• Identify areas for upskilling your team and select one or two relevant resources to start investing in their growth.
• Assess the level of trust in your organization with an Employee Engagement Survey. Use Leadership 360 assessments to improve the quality of your leadership team. Use these resources to make specific action plans for building a trusting environment.
• Take steps to improve the relational connections among your staff, to foster a caring environment.

Additional Resource

Career Paths for Everyone

Career paths are powerful incentives to draw, grow, and keep highly talented staff.

Do you struggle to retain your top talent? Do your employees feel lost, confused, or disheartened by their future prospects with your organization? Are you looking for ways to make strategic investments in the growth and development of your team members?

A best practice for maximizing your ability to develop talent in your organization is to create career paths for every member of your team. Use this resource to learn how to create different career paths for every role, regardless of the size or structure of your workplace.