Want to Keep Your Employees? Help Them Stay…

I recently had a friend in their late twenties explain their approach to work…

“My generation’s approach to career is pretty simple. You work at a job for 1-2 years, and then to keep advancing and make more money, you leave and find your next opportunity.”

Hearing this was like nails on a chalkboard. No business owner wants to think that the people they’ve invested in feel like they need to leave to succeed. Turnover isn’t good for anyone – not our teams, our clients, or our bottom line. No one wins when retention suffers, but this step-up approach has become an accepted path for talent to grow their networks and gain experience. If you can’t see your next opportunity, don’t wait for it or ask what else is available – leave and go find it elsewhere.

My first reaction to hearing this was anger. As businesses are investing in their employees, why aren’t those same employees invested in the business?

As my initial heated response cooled down a bit, that mindset shifted. I found myself asking why this “leave to advance” approach would seem like a good life strategy for an entire generation of the workforce. I landed on the answer that we all need to think about…

We may not be as invested in our employees as we tell ourselves. Possibly, the solution is to invest in our people and create company cultures where people actually want to stay.

Oversimplified? Maybe, but lean into that idea for a minute…

Say, for example, that we created businesses where we intentionally created opportunities for individuals to learn and grow, and at the same time, we went out of our way to pay them as competitively as possible. What if we created cultures that didn’t suck, and as a direct result, our workplaces became magnetic to our workforce? What if the next best opportunity for the individuals on our teams lived WITHIN our organizations and not outside them in another business?

I know what you’re thinking. For some of you, this sounds like an overly simplified strategy for retaining our best talent. For others, creating an organization like this, where people have opportunities to grow and get paid competitively, feels out of reach. For still others, you’re thinking, “We’ve been talking about culture development for years. Where have you been? You’re late to the party.”

Taking off on that last thought, here’s my response. Yes, we’ve been having conversations about company culture for decades. The culture wave has been building for a long time. There’s nothing new in this, but here’s where I push back…

If we all had this culture thing figured out, or if we were as invested in our people as we claim, those twenty-something employees wouldn’t feel like they have to leave to succeed. They’d be sticking around and becoming the catalyst for our growth – not leaving our businesses to find growth and opportunity somewhere else.

The data doesn’t lie. From a recent Forbes article:

• Workers 25 to 34 had an average tenure of only 2.8 years.
• 44% of companies do not provide compelling career paths.
• Nearly 38% of employees quit within the first year of employment.
• Employees are three times as likely to explore their options if they don’t feel supported.

If the cultures we are creating were as strong as we claim, those numbers would tell a different story. And, at the same time, all of these ongoing conversations about retention challenges would lighten up. Instead of looking for the next best thing, employees would be investing back into where they’re at right now… But that only happens if we give them a reason.

Call-to-Action

It’s time for a gut check. Have you created an environment where the individuals on your team have opportunities to grow and thrive… or are you giving them reasons to stay awhile and then explore their options? Answering these questions and then doing this work to create magnetic organizations requires us to be intentional, people-centric, and put our money where our mouth is every time we say we value culture.