Attracting and retaining the right talent for your organisation is never easy. The Covid-19 pandemic brought matters to a head in many sectors, as the shift to flexible working and general disruption prompted employees to rethink their careers. The bigger picture, though, is that people’s expectations of work were changing anyway.
The millennials and Generation Z tend to take a more instrumental view of their jobs. Their parents and grandparents (mostly grandfathers) perhaps sought a job for life with good prospects for promotion in a stable and reliable organisation. They are more interested in a series of rewarding and enriching experiences with a variety of employers. They like to be challenged and to grow in whatever role they take on, and have no qualms about moving on with no hard feelings if a job no longer feels as rewarding as they would like.
Smart employers have learned to adapt to these changing expectations, in part, by changing their own expectations. Retention is not an absolute goal in its own terms: the key is to make the most of people while they are with the organisation, and to keep them happy and productive for as long as possible. If they then move on, it’s better that they do so by mutual consent, and with good things to say about the organisation, than hang around under a cloud.
For organisations involved in transformational change, the challenges are obviously even greater. A successful transformation will see some roles disappear altogether and others change beyond recognition, while other ‘vacancies’ will appear with no obvious internal candidates. That is why it is so important to be open to the possibility that existing team members can be transformed along with the organisation itself in order to fill those vacancies, embracing new challenges and opportunities for growth in the process.
Even when an organisation is not in the process of transformational change, ‘interviewing’ existing staff is a good technique for optimising their performance (and keeping them engaged). It is an opportunity not only to discuss their achievements and challenges to date but also to talk about their ambitions and aspirations for the future. That way, you can identify synergies with the organisation’s overall strategy, as well as draw attention to any misalignment or other problems.
Above all, this is a way of acknowledging that people’s roles inevitably evolve over time. Letting someone drift in a particular job title regardless of what is happening in the organisation as a whole, let alone the wider world, is a recipe for stagnation and discontent. By contrast, a deliberate effort to rethink each team member’s contribution to the whole, and to reimagine their role when appropriate, is the best way to keep them on board and on a mission. Especially when that mission itself is evolving as it should be.
