I never win anything. I've never won a lottery, a store drawing, an Internet contest, or even a free lunch from dropping my business card in a fish bowl. But recently, I broke that trend by winning a most unusual contest at work called "Achieve Your Dream." To qualify, I filled out the contest form with one dream I wanted to achieve. I had no idea what this contest was about or why my company would care to help me achieve a dream, but I figured I had nothing to lose. Plus, I have a lot of goals and dreams, which I work toward each day, and I figured that I could use some help making them come true. But my experience with the contest taught me about much more than just my own dreams — it taught me how to be a better manager and, therefore, keep my employees happy and loyal.

I had no idea how being the "Achieve Your Dream" contest winner would help me with my everyday and future goals until I met with my "Dream Manager."As it turns out, my company, McDonald's, hired a Dream Manager to work with the winners for six-months to help us achieve our dreams. What a curious thing: A company spending money, particularly during tough economic times, to help its employees achieve their dreams. The contest rules stated that the dream could be personal or professional. Mine was personal. This is what I wrote on my contest form: "I have written a novel to help bring tolerance and compassion for different cultures and religions. I dream of getting this novel published. If this novel helps improve the life of one person, then I've achieved my life's purpose."

As the contest winners were randomly selected, it wasn't my dream that made me the winner. But I'd sure picked a big one. And now I was about to embark on a new and exciting journey. Little did I know what lay ahead.

Taking a Look Inside

During my first meeting with the Dream Manager, I began to learn the details: My company had embarked on an initiative using Matthew Kelly's Dream Manager program, a program designed to help companies with staff retention. I quickly learned that being a contest winner did not entitle me to put my feet up on my desk and daydream. Too bad! Rather, it involved homework. In fact, one of my first assignments was to read Matthew Kelly's The Dream Manager (Hyperion, 2007). In it, Kelly narrates the story of a janitorial service company that was experiencing extremely high turnover. Not only was it expensive to hire and train new staff, but high turnover was also leading to loss of customer confidence and, therefore, business.

After surveying the employees, the company found that a lack of personal fulfillment was a major issue in staff retention. Although skeptical, the janitorial company executives embarked on a program to help employees achieve their dreams.

Having managed a lot of people over the years, I thought back about many of my employees who had left and wondered if I'd been a good manager or instead contributed to their departure. Did I manage them properly? Did I provide clear and reasonable expectations? Did I offer feedback? Did I give them an opportunity to excel and grow? Was I fair and impartial? While most of us ask ourselves these questions every day, unfortunately it is often after an employee resigns. And by that time, it's too late. The damage is done. So good managers should not only make the time to evaluate their employees, but they should also take time to evaluate themselves as well.

Midway through Kelly's book, I set it down — it was time to pause and reflect. Over the next week, I began to admit to myself that perhaps there were times when I could have been a better manager. I was constantly under the pressure of deadlines, revenues, upcoming projects, contract bids, and strategic planning for the following year. Last on my list of concerns were sometimes the people, who weren't always nurtured.

I wasn't paying my staff more, and I don't think I was a better manager than any of my colleagues. So why did I experience lower staff turnover than my colleagues who ran other departments? The answer came as I examined my group dynamics. I remembered the buzz in the company was that my department was the "fun" group. Had I created a nurturing environment, I wondered? If so, why was my turnover still higher than it should have been? It was time to pick up Kelly's book again. So I read on.

Digging Deep

According to BusinessWeek, 24 percent of management jobs will become vacant over the next 10 years. Consider also the retiring baby boomers and pressure to keep immigrant workers out of America, and we have a fast-shrinking workforce. So keeping good employees is a major cost-saving initiative.

The janitorial service company in Kelly's book hired a Dream Manager to help. Company managers began by surveying employees to discover why their colleagues were leaving. The first group of survey results was slow to come in, but the information was eye-opening. Employees did not want bigger paychecks or fancy job titles — rather they lacked a reliable means of transportation required for the job. After some deliberation, the company offered a shuttle service to help transport employees to and from key locations to the office. The results, Kelly says, were almost immediate. During future surveys, the company management discovered more: Employees wanted a nurturing environment where they could fulfill their dreams, whether those dreams were professional or personal.

"The problem is, the great majority of people in the workplace today are actively disengaged," Kelly says. They don't feel connected to their work environment, to their work, or to the people they work with. It's not a big, happy family. It's just the means to an end. According to Kelly's math, if your employees are 75 percent engaged, then you have a productivity loss of 25 percent in the form of disengagement. Of course, the real cost is higher when you consider how disengagement translates to disenchantment. It not only affects the employees themselves but also the morale of others. So the janitorial company, using Dream Managers, began a program that helped each employee to state and achieve his or her dreams. The employees' dreams ranged from learning English (many workers were Spanish-speaking) to buying a first home to traveling to exotic places.

Kelly classifies dreams into 12 categories:

• Physical: lose weight or start exercising
• Emotional: take yoga to decrease stress
• Intellectual: learn a new language or musical instrument
• Spiritual: discover your purpose with a new book
• Psychological: build your confidence level
• Material: take a spa day to relax or use new technology to do better work
• Professional: take a class or get certified in something
• Financial: start a college fund or grow your retirement fund
• Creative: write a book or take a cooking class
• Adventure: go skydiving or run a marathon
• Legacy: start a charity or fund-raiser
• Character: learn to be more patient

As you can see, it would be difficult to find someone who doesn't have dreams that touch at least one or more of these categories.

Looking in the Mirror

Companies often say they are there to serve their customers. But have you ever heard a company proclaim that it exists to serve its employees? The fact is, companies need to make a profit in order to exist. Because customers are the ones paying for the products and services, they often drive profits. But who makes the products and performs the services? It's the employees. And employees are viewed, at least from an accounting perspective, as a liability and not as an asset. And while I have heard companies say that their employees are their greatest assets, do those companies really practice catering to their employees' needs as well as to the needs of their customers? In Kelly's book, the janitorial company provided a shuttle service to show employees that it cared. This action brought about an immediate change in employees' attitudes. Employees were grateful that their company cared about their lives enough to make it easier for them to get to work. And that was just for starters — in the first year, turnover went from 400 percent to 224 percent. That's still high, but it's significant progress. In addition, sick days were down 31 percent and tardiness was reduced by 65 percent. The employee retention period went from three months to six months. But this wasn't enough. You can imagine in a janitorial job environment, most employees view their jobs as a dead end.

The company set out to change that mindset by helping its employees bridge the gap between their current jobs and future dreams. This was no easy task, but the company pulled it off. The Dream Managers began to help each employee articulate his or her dreams for the future and to set goals and make plans to get there. One employee's dream was to be first in her family to own a home. The dream manager helped her outline a plan to achieve this goal and, in the end, she bought her dream house. Another dreamed of a trip he never thought he could afford. His dream came true. One by one, individual by individual, one day at a time, the Dream Managers helped employees to connect their daily work with their dreams. Many, in fact, had stopped dreaming over the years because of family, finance, and other daily issues preoccupying their time. Dreams were revived and encouraged as company management began to believe that dreams drive us. By the end of the program, the company had experienced astounding results.

Dream On

So you may be wondering about my dream. Well, it's still very much alive. In fact, I've now added 99 more dreams to my list. One of the exercises my Dream Manager assigned me was to write down a list of 100 dreams. I divided the list into three groups: dreams achievable within one year, within one to five years, and beyond five years. Some of my dreams are small, some are big. To my Dream Manager's surprise, my big dream of getting my novel published is in the category of "under one year." Yes, it's possible to achieve big dreams as long as you set smaller, measurable goals and hold yourself accountable. The important thing is to actively think of dreams and update your list regularly. You've got to keep the dreams alive. New dreams can be born every day, but we must make every effort to make them come true. This, according to Matthew Kelly, is what drives us.

Turnover costs a company 25-100 percent of an employee's annual compensation, according to Kelly. Those are conservative estimates. Of course, we have to keep in mind that some turnover is good. Sometimes weak performance is because an employee is in the wrong position and needs to be repositioned to another job. Other times, poor performers may be suffering from a personal problem and should seek help from Employee Assistance Programs, which offer medical, financial, or legal advice. Despite our best efforts, sometimes a resource simply cannot be turned around. In those cases, turnover can be a positive thing.

Five years after introducing the Dream Manager program, the janitorial company went from 400 percent turnover to just 12 percent. Home ownership tripled, employees' consumer debt fell by 40 percent, and 2,785 significant dreams were realized. This translated into tripled gross revenues and higher profit margins. The number of employees also rose from 407 to 743, including 11 Dream Managers.

Although my company has hired a Dream Manager to help coach our three contest winners to achieve our dreams, many companies won't. But as a people manager, you shouldn't let that stop you. Dream Managers are everyday people. Parents, siblings, colleagues, coaches, and friends can all be Dream Managers. Anyone who challenges you and helps you to look beyond the daily grind and into hopes and aspirations is a Dream Manager.

"Was I a Dream Manager?" I wondered, reflecting back to my "fun" department. I took a personal interest in my staff, getting to know them and their families, so perhaps I was to some degree. Helping your staff tie their work to their future dreams can make a major impact on employee morale and staff retention. Meanwhile, don't forget to have and live your own dreams. Dreams give us direction. Making dreams come true makes us happy and energized. On my office wall, I have a sign up that says "Shhhhh...I'm dreaming."

Nahid Jilovec is a System iNEWS technical editor. An award-winning writer and speaker, she has published four e-commerce books and has written more than 200 articles.