What would happen if the mission of your Human Resources Department looked more like the mission of a university’s job placement center?
Last week, my colleague Beth and I co-led a workshop on innovation and collaborative problem solving for a group of 30 leaders from a company that provides information technology services and systems integration for government agencies. Our workshop was part of a 9-month program during which participants work on teams to apply the leadership skills they have been learning to one of the organization’s most critical challenges. At the end of the program, the teams present their recommendations to a panel of executives. One team had been asked to develop a retention strategy for the organization’s employees. Since Beth and I wanted to encourage the teams to use some of the concepts we had been teaching as they began work on their assignments, I engaged the team in a conversation about retention.
I started asking the team questions that seemed more upsetting than helpful. For example I said, “I’ve heard you talk about the costs of employees leaving the company, what are the costs associated with employees staying too long? What are the benefits of helping employees move on to pursue careers elsewhere? How long should an employee stay?” I’m pretty sure that the team stopped thinking about my questions the minute I left their table to visit with another team. I however spent the rest of the week thinking about employee retention.
It is very easy to find data and articles about the costs of employee turnover. You know what’s hard? Finding data and articles about the costs of employees staying with a company.
Consider this list of attitudes people hold, but only share with trusted friends and their family:
- I am bored and burnt out, but looking for a new job is more painful than staying
- If I can hang in there for another couple of years, my stock options will be fully vested
- I’m comfortable and good at what I do. My job is easy as long as things don’t change. I just need to make sure things don’t change.
What is the opportunity cost to an organization – especially an organization desperate for innovation and agility – of retaining people who stay primarily because it’s easier than leaving?
It may appear that I’m arguing for more draconian performance management policies, I’m not. I don’t think we should ferret out people who are less than thrilled to show up every day and show them the door. I am actually wondering what would change if organizations thought about retention from the perspective of the employee rather than from the perspective of the company.
From the employee’s point-of-view, there will be times when long-term job stability is valuable and there will be times when long-term job stability is merely comfortable or at least more comfortable than being out of a job. There may even be times when job stability inhibits an employee from pursuing a risky aspiration. To a recent college graduate, feeling a sense of belonging while being challenged and getting paid may be more important than stability. To someone who is starting a family and thinking about investing in a home, stability probably feels essential.
Let me offer three purpose statements for Human Resources Departments, each of which focuses on an employee population with different needs for job stability.
For early-career employees…
Our mission is to prepare you to be successful in your next job (P.S. your manager and your team will help you be successful in your current job).
For mid-career employees…
Our mission is to find ways for our organization to create value from what lights you up.
For late-career employees…
Our mission is to help you transfer your skills, knowledge and experience to others while we explore ways to liberate you from the constraints of your current role.
Universities, The Peace Corps and The Military are three examples of institutions that recruit and develop talented people who then leave the institution to pursue bigger and better things. Even a company like McDonalds has been rethinking its relationship to employee retention. Whether or not the reality matches the advertising, I applaud McDonald’s latest campaign, “America’s best first job.”
I can’t help wondering what would have happened if the team assigned to recommend a retention strategy had framed their assignment as, “How might we redesign our business systems so that things improve when we help our most talented people leave for a better opportunity?”