Learning Organizations and Technical Support Retention
By Kurt D. Kirstein, Ed.D.

In the first article in this series (SSPA News, Aug. 17, 2004), I described a recent study I conducted to determine if there was a relationship between a set of specific leadership qualities and employee retention. The goal of this study was to identify specific actions that support team managers could take that had been shown to have a relationship with higher rates of employee retention.

This article discusses the relationship between five qualities typically associated with a learning organization and rates of staff retention in technical support. These qualities were selected to try to determine how structuring a support department as a learning organization might help keep key, experienced people in place and create an environment where newer employees could reach technical proficiency more quickly. The qualities that were examined were:

• Understanding the company’s vision
• Participation in the decision-making process
• Participation in developing departmental objectives
• Taking the time to reflect on past mistakes and successes
• A positive approach to mistakes

Company vision
Vision was the first quality to be included on the survey as part of an effort to test for leadership qualities that were related to learning organizations. Available literature suggests that in a learning organization, all members should be able to understand and verbalize the organization’s vision. This study sought to see if that applied to technical support organizations and, if so, if it has a positive relationship with employee retention.

The results indicate that some technical support organizations understood their company’s vision while others did not. No surprise there. The results also suggest that the relationship between vision and retention was positive. This indicates that there is value in involving employees, at all levels, in establishing and understanding the company’s vision and that doing so is likely to have a positive influence on employee retention.

According to the experts on learning organizations, helping to establish, or simply understand, the organization’s vision encourages employees to take personal ownership for its realization. It also provides them with an element of control, however small, over driving the vision forward. Understanding the vision is the first step in helping to achieve it.

Participative decisions
The inclusion of employees, at all levels, in the process of making significant decisions was another quality of learning organizations cited by several experts. Encouraging participation in significant decision-making processes was suggested as a method to enhance an employee’s sense of personal ownership of departmental decisions and increase both the relevance and importance of each decision to job of the employee. This category was included in this study to understand the extent to which technical support leaders sought feedback from their employees and used this feedback to set policy, create procedures, and manage the day to day tactical operations of the support center, as well as to determine if such actions were likely to have a positive impact on employee retention.

The results indicate that it was common practice for managers to consult with staffs when making important decisions, yet it was not a strategy that was universally employed. The results indicate a high amount of variation in the responses from those leaders with high retention rates suggesting that they did not consistently follow a participative decision-making process. Despite this fact, the relationship between participative decisions and retention is strong enough to suggest that it is a useful practice and that it is likely to have a positive influence on retention rates for technical support departments.

Departmental objectives
Allowing employees to set personal objectives was proposed by several experts as being an important way to expand the employee’s sense of control. Allowing them to participate in setting annual objectives for the entire department was another. It was suggested in the literature that employees who are allowed to help determine the annual objectives for their departments were more likely to feel a sense of ownership for these objectives and to work harder to ensure that they were met.

This question yielded a relatively even distribution of responses. Some technical support organizations never allow employees to help draft departmental objectives, some allow their employees to participate on occasion, and some always allow their employees to participate. This question also yielded the highest correlations in the study suggesting that allowing employees to participate in setting organizational objectives has a positive relationship to retention and is a practice that should be considered by any technical support organization as a way to reduce employee turnover.

Reflection
Another important part of learning organizations described by experts was reflection, which they described as the opportunity to learn from past projects by reflecting back on what worked and what did not. They suggest that organizations that allocated time to learn from past projects were more likely to identify effective strategies for future projects and eliminate those that proved to be counter-productive. The literature also indicated that too few organizations take time for reflection because it is backwards-focused and draws resources away from other projects. This question was included on the survey to determine how many technical support organizations valued reflection and, if they did, what relationship it had with employee retention.

In every case, the survey respondents indicated that they allow at least some time for reflection but the distribution of the responses between “sometimes” and “always” indicates substantial variation in the number of past projects that each department examined. The correlations were positive and moderate in strength indicating an important relationship between reflection and employee retention. Those correlations suggest that taking the time and making the effort to learn from past projects has a positive impact on retention.

Mistakes
Similar to reflection, mistakes are seen by some as opportunities to learn and grow. Yet, another important aspect of mistakes is the way that they are reacted to within an organization. Managers who regard mistakes solely as troublesome inconveniences to be avoided at all costs are missing an important growth opportunity. Managers who see mistakes, along with their resolutions, as opportunities to learn are helping to create a culture of learning that supports individual and departmental improvement and growth.

The distribution of survey responses to the question regarding the use of mistakes indicated that most respondents used mistakes as learning opportunities with nearly half indicating that they always followed this practice. The correlation for all respondents showed limited support for the use of a learning-based approach to mistakes when considering employee retention in technical support organizations. That is not to suggest that there is only limited value in approaching mistakes in a positive manner. Rather, for the purposes of this study, it is merely an indictor that, among the many beneficial aspects of a positive approach to mistakes, employee retention was not the strongest.

Next week
The final article of this series, coming next week, discusses the relationship between two self-leadership qualities and their effect on staff retention in technical support.

Kurt Kirstein has 17 years experience working in technical support, mainly in telecommunications and biotech companies, with the past 12 years in leadership positions. Over the past 5 years, he’s managed the customer services and training group for a small biotechnical company. He earned his bachelor's degree in computer science at The Evergreen State College and holds a master's degree from Seattle University in adult education, and training and a doctorate in organizational leadership from Nova Southeastern University.