Thank you for being here for this session. My name is Angelina and the topic that I would like to share a little bit more on my experience and practice is retention means prevention.Uh This topic is um very special and very important for me personally because on one hand, uh I'm a social psychologist, it means that I'm genuinely curious about people behavior and what impacts the decisions that we uh that we take. And on the other hand, I spent the last 15 years uh working on building, developing and managing teams, half of them technical teams. So obviously, retention is uh one of the key goals that we have in building and managing teams. So thank you for being today here with me. So uh a little bit more about me, a couple of words. So last 10 years, I'm working for it and software companies uh with the key goal to develop and retain technical things. I was working for big companies like Angie Bank and Hewlett Packard, large scale companies. And the last five years I found uh working for different, I invest basically work for different start up at um different stage of their growth and development. So currently my role is managing director, I'm leading the Bulgaria Office of a US based start up called NUO. It's a software company. Um This and basically in my background, I have different experience in general management team development back in the time. Um hr and trained LND person.

Uh So this is obviously why the retention topic is important for me having this career path over the way, uh particularly proud of my two daughters, 10 and seven, a huge challenge also to, to retain their, you know, patience and um to, to develop also their skill set. Uh So I'm basically practice my skills that also at home. Uh And I'm particularly proud of my third child, which is my current team, Noos team. Um I started this team from scratch three years ago and I'm so happy to share that for the period of three years. So from of 2019 to 2021 we have 97.5% retention. It means 2.5% attrition, which is the result that we not like even dream of to achieve. So today, during our session, I would like to share a little bit more of the really practical things that we use with the team last three years to achieve this result and to retain the core team, uh not only to retain them but also uh keep them helping um fit good fit. And in terms of culture and walking our values. And probably this is the moment to share that our core value is so critical and crucial for our retention. Our core value, core value is take care of each other. And I believe that's, that's one of the keys for our success. So uh my plan for today, my agenda for today, a couple of things, I would like briefly to go through the concept of retention though.

Uh what is my perspective of the retention and some stats uh relevant to 2022 you know, this year and last year, they were a little bit different compared to the last, for example, five years. Uh So there are trends in terms of attrition, there are trends in terms of the labor market, um mental health, et cetera that obviously impact the retention rates and retention strategies. I'll go again briefly through the things that I'm sure you're very much aware of like processing and practices with impact on retention. But I would like um going through the processes to share some um tips and hints. What was successful for us? What worked for us last three years. I would like also to share some tools for retention that we use very simple tools like stay reviews or um ongoing feedback and plans for development, not really like nothing um extraordinary or revolutionary. But what we, what we did last three years is to be persistent in our focus, to retain the team members. And the fourth one is my, uh I, I would like to share my lessons learned my top six rules for retention that so far work shows in the future. So hope that you are able to see my screen.

Uh Here are some personal photos uh from an event that we had last month, a rafting event. And I will sure now why I'm sharing those personal photos obviously related to the topic of retention. So uh let's start with the definition of retention. Um There are different definitions, various of definitions, one that I like most is power of capacity. So there are a lot of things in a lot of benefits from retention. Uh But basically, the ultimate benefit to retain your team is to explore the full potential and capacity of this team. Uh So we know from experience that retention allows the team culture to develop. So to have enough time to build your own values, your own uh rituals, your own rules of behavior, your own, um you know, little jokes, even the things that help you to identify yourself with the team, but not only that having the time and um the sustain sustainability of the team, then the team successfully reached the stage um of excellent cooper operation and high productivity.

Usually this is the fourth stage of team dynamic and you, you need time for that to do so you need a core team to go through different stages to the four stages to achieve this high productivity stage. The on the slide, you can see our rafting photos. But why I'm sharing this? Because during the drafting, after drafting, basically, we had a discussion with the team members about similarities between the drafting and the team management and team culture. So I discussed that and one of the team members said that when you need to have the right crew to, to achieve the result and to go through the challenging times and you need to know the rules, you need to know the passwords, even of the team, you need to know what, what is your role and we need to do what you need to do to make this exercise successful.

And when we talk about in a couple of minutes about why the role and the clear career path and the future and the scope is so important uh to um to retain our people. And then um other similarities, you need to have a leader who will continue to row when it's hardest. So the leader and drafting leader is always in front. So leader is the one who continue to roll when it's hardest and break the waves to make it easier for the team. So and then of course, to celebrate the victory together. So in short, this is my experience with keeping people, but of course, I will show more, more practical experiences. So culture, the foundation of retention uh while we're talking about culture. So culture is on one hand, the root cause of retention. On the other hand, the result of retention and speaking about rafting again, and I promise this will be the last rafting slide. Uh The retention of people allows us basically to sail in the same boat for a longer period of time. So uh I'm sure you're aware that we need a year and a half to two years to go through the stages of the, the dynamic in order to achieve productivity.

Uh So this core team sitting on the same boat will allow us to build that culture during the time. Uh So we'll talk about in a couple of minutes, we will talk about uh where recruitment is crucial uh for the retention of the team. Basically, you cannot expect anything if they don't have the right team on the board uh to lead from the front as we discuss and to have trust for each other. And we tell how important the trust became last couple of years, especially having millennials on board when there are stats that 75% of millennials are eager to stay with their employer if they have trust. And if there is a culture of trust and transparency. Uh so my lessons from this rafting and why it's related to retention. If we stop as leaders to focus on retention, everything stops and everyone stops. Uh and 80% of the companies stated last two years that um although the the retention is their key goal, their number one priority, it's hard for them to focus and to be persistent in the activities that require attention to continue to work on retention. And last one about uh rafting and retention is that basically biggest waves break in the first um the leader to affect the team less so to retain our team members, it means in the technical world, not that not everywhere.

And there are different type of leadership in different businesses. But in the tech world, we need to be hands on and to be there to break the waves for the team. So I was stuck with the rafting stuff and continue with some fast facts very briefly. So I'll, I'll prefer to share more personal experience rather the fact that you can go. Uh but things are changed last two years and this year, the end of 2021 beginning of 2022 we see significant difference in the labor market and trends. They were not, they were not here the last couple of years. So trends like um um massive layoffs uh like the great resignation, uh things that have impact on not only the attitude but the behavior on the labor market and the impact of course is on retention. So we can see that one third of the new employees quit after or about their six month, it means that 33% of the team members uh are part of so called early attrition. And we will discuss now early attrition in two slides uh which is huge. So in the past, we were talking about 15 to 20% early attrition, which was again um huge. And um companies are um creating developing programs for um to prevent the tri in terms of full boarding and better recruitment practices. Now, we can see 33% which is really huge and it means that people are much more open to um to seek for other opportunities if their expectations are not met, we can see that between 3 to 44.5 million employees quit each and every month in the US.

So this is obviously huge move into the labor market. Interesting part is that 94% of uh the employees have stated that they will stay with their employer if the current employer invest more in their development, learning opportunities and career growth, which means that we can do a lot of stuff prior to facing the resignation letter.

And we have like 76% looking for another job opportunity, those are not recognized, which is again, something that we can do a lot to prevent. That's why we're talking about prevention to increase the retention rate. Uh And last five years, we were talking about attrition rate between attrition rates between 10 to 15% typically for the for the software business between 15 to 22. Now, we're talking about 25 in the software business, 25 to 3030 even 33% declared last month. So obviously, we are at the point when we need not only to focus on retention, but we need to um review our internal processes and practices. And as you can see here, 75% out of uh 34,000 responses, 75% of the reasons could be prevented. So basically, in 75% of the cases, we could prevent the turnover and that's what we are going to focus on. So, processes and practices with impact on retention very briefly. Um Yes, I'm sure you're very much aware what are the processes that are related to um the employee turnover. So, of course, recruitment on boarding goal setting feedback, leadership, career progression, trust and care and health and happiness, especially last year and a half.

Uh and some practice that I would like to share that worked for us the last three years in terms of recruitment. So um common mistakes that we see, especially on our software market, we always focus on uh big numbers, hyper growth, um shortage of resources on the market, of course. So we are typically we tend to do to compromise the selection process, not because we don't want to do this in a quality way, but because the speed of the business is so high that we need to catch up constantly. So things that we never um we never compromised and we speak religiously to one is to recruit in alignment with the maturity level of the company. Uh For example, we know that we are a start up and our, we are currently our seventh year. So we know that we are not a big established company. So we don't want to attract people who are eager to uh have a structure processes everywhere and um guidance for everything we know that we need people with tolerance, uh ambiguity, uh more tolerant to uh to uncertainty and to work on stuff that is not very well structured.

The other thing that very much works for us is to set really pessimistic expectations. So to, to be able to um show the the dark, the dark picture as dark as possible in order to be sure that if people are joining, uh they will not be disappointed, even they might be positively surprised by what they can see. We know where are the gaps in our company? And we communicate this hopefully, for example, we need to improve our own boarding process and we set the right expectations that it is not perfect and we set expectations what people can expect. And then we see extremely low um early attrition in the first six months, setting those pessimistic expectations. Uh what we, what we learned from uh in terms of experience is that each and every time we compromise the process to catch up with the business, uh to answer the demand of the hiring managers or just to make our numbers, it hits us back poorly. Uh It might be a toxic employee, uh that came on board the last couple of years. It might be the hiring manager who is disappointed, it might be early attrition.

But every time we compromise the process and being a little bit more tolerant to the profile without having a perfect fit, it was not a successful hiring. Uh And the other thing that we can see in a lot of start ups uh with un mature premature processes, we are trying to fix processes by hiring people that could not be done. There is a huge responsibility for the newcomers and it never works. So this is something that we learn from the past. It, it's best to have our processes in place and then to hire people to manage them rather than replace processes with people in terms of phone boarding. What what really impacts our um our retention rate was the mentorship. So mentorship program, dedicated mentorship program, mentorship, time and clear and structural on boarding process was a huge benefit uh to early attrition to prevent early attrition. Uh Then uh what what also we introduced this last year was an early interview at the third month.

So the early I interview uh target to identify signs of early attrition and see what kind of drawbacks the employees facing that we can remove. So uh this basically impacts in a positive way. Um the early attrition, for sure, uh then obvious things. But again, uh to achieve retention, we need to be persistent and we need to show that there is a clear future, you know, uh the technical guys are they receive like thousands of offers almost every day. Uh So, to see the future in the current company, of course, if there is such uh to see that there are development actions plan, that there is a clear um but for this team member to grow personally and professionally and to this to be in retail, this to be signed by the manager and the team member, this has also very positive impact on the retention and makes conversation a lot easier when it, when it comes to um to development and uh to um to discuss opportunities for growth, feedback is an obvious thing here.

What I would like to say is that um stats show that 86% of the cases when the team member provides feedback, there is no action afterwards. So no uh companies, employers managers do not act upon and that is something that usually uh ruins the trust and um you know, has a huge implications on the attrition and retention rate. Uh So obvious things. I I would like to share my uh top six as we are running out of time. So talk, I will uh I can talk a little bit more on the state reviews, but running out of time. So if you want, you can reach out and I can provide you a template for state reviews. Basically, the idea of staying reviews is to prevent the exit interviews. So the interviews are extremely beneficial, challenging and demanding too, but extremely beneficial to reduce attrition and to be able to manage attrition in a better way. Uh and of course succession planning and um back fields and everything that is related to the attrition.

And last one from my end, um my personal top six in terms of retention. Uh First one was hard to learn but crucial to retain, sometimes mean to separate and to retain the team, sometimes mean to separate with people who are not walking the values, who are toxic, who are destructive for the team culture, who are demonstrating behavior that is not aligned to the values.

And this is perceived. Well in the past, I was so keen to keep everyone on board and to try to transform and change. But sometime you need to take the hard decision and to separate in, in the good of the in the benefit of the team. Uh Second thing which is crucial for our team is mental health, mental and physical health. We cannot retain anyone who is sick, who is depressed, who is anxious. Because obviously, if they do not get the proper support, they will look for their happiness outside and we work together to boost this happiness inside.