Baby Boomers and Gen X left the workforce during the pandemic. As a result, millennials are taking over leadership roles in organizations. Unfortunately, employee retention is problematic with younger generations who desire meaning, flexibility, well-being, and so much more in their careers. This poses a challenge in building a bench for future leaders with the competencies, knowledge, and experience that are slowly lost in the law enforcement profession. Brenda Dietzman is back to provide strategies to retain employees and develop them into future leaders.
Brenda has more than 28 years of law enforcement and corrections experience and retired from the Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Office as the undersheriff in charge of jail operations. She is the founder of Wayfinder Consulting and currently speaks and presents for local to international audiences on topics like resilience, leadership, developing women leaders, and leading generations.
Specifics of Brenda’s discussion are about:
- How leaders are departing organizations that emphasize the need to cultivate future leaders.
- How people are now prioritizing life beyond work which requires leaders to cater to employees’ needs to retain them within the organization.
- The prevalence of job hopping, the motivation behind this trend, other reasons behind employees leaving their jobs, and what organizations can do to stop this and retain employees.
- Looking at Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to understand what motivates employees and utilizing this to facilitate employee retention.
- The importance of leaders taking the time to know and learn about their people and what motivates them.
- How the exit of Baby Boomers and Gen X from the workforce during the pandemic created a leadership that is made up of much younger leaders who require training and guidance.
- Attributes to look out for that determine whether an employee is suitable to be a future leader.
- Effective strategies to grow leaders by…
- Taking care of the whole person by providing them with social, physical, mental, and spiritual resources.
- Communicating with younger generations consistently.
- Starting with yes to encourage creativity and initiative.
- Investing in their growth through microlearning and other learning resources.
- Conducting stay interviews to uncover why employees remain with the organization and utilizing this information to attract others.
- Having an adopt an employee program where community members recognize and support employees.
- Ways to assist employee career development by…
- Offering various forms of growth opportunities.
- Providing training and development that may not necessarily be technical skills but are valuable in the job.
- Implementing mentoring, coaching, and sponsoring programs to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion.
- Developing career pathways that provide them with a roadmap on how to get from where they are to their goal.
- Encouraging employees to interview and interact with people who are or were in positions they’re aiming for.
- Defining the qualities of a future leader, implementing trainings, and conducting feedback and evaluations.
- Providing an environment that challenges employees but is also safe to fail to allow innovations.
- Modeling great leadership and rewarding good behavior.
Questions from the webinar attendees are on:
- Getting leaders to engage in leadership training.
- Deal with demotivating and frustrating situations within the organizations.
- Engaging millennials and Gen Z to learn from older experienced leaders.
Other Webinars with this Presenter
- Jan 18: Leadership Reset: Setting Goals for the New Year
- March 30: Organizational Stress: From the Front Line Perspective
- April 28: Organizational Stress: From the Administrative Perspective
- July 25: Confident Female Leadership
- Nov 9: Growing the Leaders You Need for the Future (this webinar)
- March 7, 2024: The Art of Curious Leadership
- April 23, 2024: Promoting Yourself in a Male-Dominated Field
- July 16, 2024: Ask Me Anything: Managing the Younger Generation – Gen Z
Audience Comments
- “I thought that the presenter was spot on about how the younger generation feels about working and the environment of work to feel comfortable to stay at a specific job.
- “Great webinar thanks for sharing your expertise
- “The most valuable thing I learned from this webinar was Adopt an Employee Program with schools. I too entered my current agency through this type of program and have excelled.
- “Very good webinar.”
- “Loved the career path exercise. Would be great to use to help develop staff under your supervision.”
- “Good methods for engagement that promote growth of the team.”
- “I think the overall theme of caring for our employees and being engaged in the day-to-day. It’s easy to get caught up in the work and not take the time to learn about the people you work with every day.”
- “The career path worksheet is a valuable tool.”
- “So many good ideas on how to support our employees from a supervisor role even if admin isnt willing to do so. I really appreciated the emphasis on taking care of ourselves socially, physically, mentally, and spiritually!”
- “There was information I never heard before when I’ve watched other webinars about leadership, such as considering the traits of the newer generations and the benefit of having people mentor others who are different from them.”
- “EVERYTHING! I really enjoyed the topic of Career Pathways.” 🙂
Women in Federal Law Enforcement (WIFLE) is an organization of individuals working together to foster awareness of the value that women bring to law enforcement. WIFLE’s goals include recruitment, retention, and promotion of women in federal law enforcement occupations, and the continued development of an information sharing and support network. WIFLE promotes collaborative leadership styles and the development of programs and policies that balance community service with enforcement of the laws. WIFLE also serves as an information and resource network for women in federal law enforcement, domestically and internationally. WIFLE is a leader in diversity, equity and inclusion in the federal law enforcement profession, a cornerstone to effectively serving communities across the country.
