Slowing Turnover
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So you’re building talent, you’re pulling together a good team. Like a sports team manager, it’s all coming together nicely pre-season, and you’re quietly confident you’ve a good shot at the finals this year. But what’s going to disrupt this? What’s going to upset your plans? Who’s going to rain on your parade?
Why do people leave?
The biggest problem we see all the time is people leaving. It’s important to recognize that people have their own minds- their own priorities, their own pressures. We would like people to buy into the organisation and it’s purpose, but if it’s a choice between doing the best for the company and the best for their family, you’ll never win (and nor would you want to). Employees are allowed to leave, and most of the time we receive a resignation with stoic disappointment for us, but an appreciation on their choices and their priorities (although sometimes we start planning the celebrations of their departure).
The reasons employees leave are many, but to keep it simple, either they are driven away, or they are tempted elsewhere. Either the grass is greener on the other side, or this grass tastes foul.
How do people leave? Passive lookers
Most people aren’t looking for a new job. Starting a new jobs are disruptive and difficult processes- which people find unpleasant to vary degrees. But, everyone is open to a compliment, and there are few bigger compliments that being approached with an opportunity, so everyone is on the market, if the offer is good. This could be external competitors, but it also be internal competitors, if your organisation is big enough.
Sometimes people leaving our talent pool is just as unexpected to them as it is to us. Sometimes employees are headhunted by competitors, sometimes they go to help out their son’s growing business. Sometimes they’ve been offered work on a tropical island along with their partner. Can we spot this? Not really.
How do people leave? Active lookers
How do people quit? Yes, by writing a resignation, but more than that- this is a quick discussion of the internal mental processes people typically go through prior to resignation.
Active lookers are people who have decided to leave and are actively looking; applying for jobs, going for interviews. These may be known to you, but most of the time the organisation doesn’t know until the resignation comes in.
Semi-active lookers
‘Sort of’ looking. It’s human nature to be happy, but curious to see if you could do better (I’m ignoring the romantic relationship metaphors to all of these categories, but don’t worry, I can see them). A semi-active is employed, not actively looking, but has feelers out to see what the market is doing, and may what their prospects are. They may get regular emails from a job board about advertised job, which may be tempting.
Are they immediate flight risks? No, and it’s very feasible they could stay long term. But they could be tempted away with offers that you could have happily matched. They may have fallen for the ego boost of being headhunted, but could easily end up no better off than had they stayed.
Pulling off a turnaround play
Can you retrieve these people? Can you turn them back from the path of departure? If someone actively looking, is actively trying, can you talk them into staying?
Many people say no- once you’ve decided to go, it’s just a question of time. It is arguable that it’s not irretrievable, and also many a departing an employee will express disappointment that no one tried.
What do I think? Well seeing as you’re asking… active lookers can be reluctant lookers; they would like to stay with their friends if they got a better role. Many people would rather have got that promotion and stay with their friends than have to go elsewhere and make new friends. But this is the slim minority (one third? I’m making up numbers, but less than the majority but a not an inconsequential number).
Some starting points to keeping people.
Don’t take them for granted. This is where performance reviews are so important (at least annually if not more), and the importance of having a two-way conversation about both their pay, and their plans for the future. Managers should (and often do) have some idea of the likelihood that someone could be tempted away, and we want a heads up if any options we might want to exercise to keep them.
What to do: Passive and semi-active lookers
- Give them something to stay for. One career regret of mine is a job that I was offered but did not take, because I was in the middle of something. It was complex, interesting, and only I could finish it, so I was enjoying what I was going to be able to provide to our employees, and I feel that I would let people down if I left halfway through. For most people, a sense of completion, or non-completion can be very motivating to stay.
-Keep them competitively/sufficiently remunerated. We can’t stop a high-ball offer. If someone is prepared to pay top-dollar to poach our people, that’s likely going to happen. But that’s the less likely situation; genuine headhunting is rare. Most likely the same job elsewhere is either going to pay market rate, or maybe 1-2% above, and it’s not worth the risks involved in leaving your current job, for a few grand. If you pay below competitive in general, or for this person, then you run the risk of a reasonable offer being tempting.
Active lookers
-Listen to them. It’s too tempting to see active lookers as disloyal, too tempting to see them as ‘dead to you’ if you know they are looking to leave. It’s easy to see them being drawn away, not pushed away. But there may be reasons that are driving them away that could be fixed. If there are reasons that they would stay if they things were fixed, better to keep them.
-Don’t bargain with them. The temptation can be to negotiate. But a few tempters (pay, benefits, job titles) or other tidbits to entice them won’t work. Offering sweets to stay only gives you a short-term sugar hit. This may feel contradictory to the above, but it’s not; -fixing non-financials is one thing, offering tempters is different.
-Promote them. If your going to offer, go whole hog. Doesn’t matter if you need them to stay in their current job- that ship is sailing. So promote them when you can. This actually has to be a real and significant role, otherwise you’re just bargaining.
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