Companies are discovering that good employees are hard to find, and so must start implementing intentional strategies for retaining them. In their retention efforts, employers need to look more closely at their current employee utilization to be sure that they are not losing good people for the wrong reasons. This is especially true for high performing employees who feel stagnated, bored, unchallenged or unhappy in their current job.
Focusing on internal career development strategies will boost the productivity and morale of the current employee base while aligning skills, talents, needs and preferences in the best possible way. Here is the story of an unnecessary loss of a good employee:
Carolyn, a six-year employee, had worked in the customer service department as a telephone support representative. For most of that time, she enjoyed her work, especially the opportunity to help customers by providing information and resources to solve their problems. Over time, however, she found that she wanted a change of pace and more of a challenge.
Carolyn had talked both to her manager and to her human resource department about this, and while they seemed to be empathetic, they did not offer any real options or solutions. They just re-iterated to her what a valuable customer service rep she was and how much they valued her in that role. They reinforced that they really needed her there, and that really was the best place for her to be. Unfortunately, they did not really hear her issue and did not take seriously her expression for a need to change and grow.
Six months after those discussions, Carolyn left her company to accept a customer service trainer’s role in another organization. “I really hated to leave my former employer. It was a good company, but it became clear to me that I was going nowhere.” Carolyn stated in retrospect. “I tried to get them to understand my needs, but they weren’t taking our conversations seriously. It seems that it would have been smarter for them to have found a way to keep me in the company in another capacity, rather than to lose me altogether.”
Carolyn’s situation is becoming more and more common. Unfortunately, companies still don’t seem to hear employee issues and respond to them, and they don’t seem to learn the lessons from seeing good talent go out the door. Too many just shrug it off, accept no responsibility, and start the recruiting process to find a new replacement.
What organizations need to build into their talent management and career development efforts is a process of “inplacement” – growing an individual’s career by offering alternative internal opportunities to add to their skill sets and keep them stimulated. In smaller organizations that do not have a formal human resources or organizational development function to facilitate this, then leadership can be aware of employee’s needs and offer to enhance or add responsibility to their existing role to keep them challenged and engaged as much as possible.
Surveys of today’s workforce indicate that career development and the opportunity to learn and expand is a growing factor that employees look for in a company that they want to work for and stay with. This is especially true of the younger generations in the workforce. Talented and marketable professionals have lots of other options if their current employer does not listen to and respond to their career development needs.
