"Picture a huge, heavy flywheel—a massive metal disk mounted horizontally on an axle, about 30 feet in diameter, 2 feet thick, and weighing about 5,000 pounds. Now imagine that your task is to get the flywheel rotating on the axle as fast and long as possible. Pushing with great effort, you get the flywheel to inch forward, moving almost imperceptibly at first. You keep pushing and, after two or three hours of persistent effort, you get the flywheel to complete one entire turn. You keep pushing, and the flywheel begins to move a bit faster, and with continued great effort, you move it around a second rotation. You keep pushing in a consistent direction.... It builds momentum... Then, at some point—breakthrough! The momentum of the thing kicks in your favor, hurling the flywheel forward... You’re pushing no harder than during the first rotation, but the flywheel goes faster and faster. Each turn of the flywheel builds upon work done earlier, compounding your investment of effort." (Good to Great, Jim Collins)
What if we looked at hiring and retention through the lens of a flywheel—an "employee flywheel."
Jim Collins’ classic business research book, Good to Great, explains that what separates good companies from great is a series of well-executed actions, one after another, to develop momentum that compounds over time. And it’s not just one action in isolation—in order to kickstart the flywheel and keep the momentum going, many actions must be working together.
And great companies typically have one main thing in common—great people.
When companies hire people who resonate with the mission, communicate clearly aligned rewards and incentives, encourage community and collaboration, and provide learning and development opportunities to aid in career growth and financial freedom, employees often become brand evangelists, leading to reverse recruiting where talent is asking to be a part of something bigger than themselves.
These positive company actions aren’t flywheel propellers on their own, but each action working together and the subsequent compounding cycle can create this "employee flywheel."
Many of us have thought about flywheels in connection with building the revenue side of our business. But why haven’t we spent more time discussing this concept as it relates to our employees—after all, it’s hard to generate revenue without people. And it’s even harder to build growing, lasting revenue without great people who are with us for many years.
Naturally, having high employee retention rates is beneficial—less turnover means more productivity. And every time a great person leaves the company, you lose the impact that individual made to their team and allow other great talent to start imagining life outside of your company.
So where do you start?
If you want to lead a great company, with sustained success driven by collective momentum—you need great people. Not just people or good people but great people—key talent, in the right roles, at the right time, motivated to perform their job and incentivized to stay and perform.
Great people are just the start of your flywheel—creating the momentum needed to succeed. To motivate great employees and reduce attrition, it's important to define a strong corporate culture, encourage employees to live that culture (this can draw in more key players), keep the performers performing and build company momentum. And around the wheel flies.
While this flywheel approach has been applied to various individual departments of a business—sales, product development, etc.—the employee flywheel is an idea that could help companies build momentum and accelerate their growth across the entire business by increasing engagement and reducing turnover.
So, how do you kickstart your own employee flywheel? How do you attract the right employees who will help your business grow and create a thriving company culture, steeped with long-term employees?
On the hiring side, if you’ve been a hiring manager, you’re going to know what I’m talking about next. There is often a “perfect” candidate for a role, but you rarely are able to land that candidate. Why? Well, they’re every other employer’s perfect candidate too. Of course, you end up hiring someone awesome but… what if? What if you were always able to hire that perfect candidate? And what if you were able to hire a team of perfect hires or a company of perfect hires? It seems hard to imagine, but I believe that should be your goal. And hiring great candidates begets other great candidates.
One way to attract and retain that top talent is by offering great benefits. Creating a strong company culture, building brand ambassadors among employees and offering competitive compensation are also all good ways to attract the right talent.
What’s next? The key to a flywheel’s mechanical advantage is continuous operation—so once you secure that great talent, you need to find a way to keep them. Engaging, listening, showing value and appreciation are all ways to keep your employees happy and performing.
By attracting talented workers and retaining them over a longer period, through incentives, engagement, culture, you’re investing in highly skilled and experienced employees across the company who are then reinforcing the culture and being productive. From there, the employee flywheel is operating and building momentum in sales, engineering, customer service—accelerating the company’s overall growth and strategy.
This is not something that can happen overnight.
It takes planning, some missteps and ongoing optimization to create the perfect strategy for an employee flywheel that fits your company. But investing time in finding the right employees and learning about them and what they need in order to stay can make a huge difference in your company’s growth potential. As research from Gallup notes, companies with highly engaged employees produce better business outcomes.
It’s time to get your employee flywheel moving!
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This article was originally featured in Forbes.com
