It’s time to change your mindset when it comes to employee retention

Whoosh! Did you feel that? It was time changing how we manage business. And changing things fast.

Gone are the days of employees hoping to stay with your company long enough for that immemorial gold watch. Now, our workforce watches their own watch to ensure they expediently exit the building for next, new, challenging opportunity.

Hold on to your chapeau. Here’s the Google’s honest truth; young people are changing jobs every two to three years. I call it the millennial perpetual motion boogie (as in boogie on down the road…).

Young people are being encouraged to maintain a ‘growth mindset,’ which is defined as a hunger for learning and a desire to work hard, discover new things, tackle challenges, and grow as a person. That doesn’t happen if one remains stagnant in any way – including in a career.

Here’s what today’s newer employees hear about embracing frequent job change:

Continuously learn, develop, and advance!
Stay with a company longer than two years and you’ll be paid 50% less.
Life is more stable with frequent job changes. You develop survival skills and become an expert at managing your career.
The longer you spend locked up inside any organization, the softer your muscles become. Who can afford to get soft and flabby?
With each new job, you get stronger in a way you couldn’t at your old job.
You get good at spotting healthy vs. toxic workplaces — and avoiding the toxic ones.
When you job-hunt every three to five years, you know your market value.
Stay beyond three years and your focus becomes office politics.

So, it’s a new reality. Your employees will be changing jobs every two to three years – for the rest of their lives.

The good news for employers

To be frank, this new reality is scaring the daylights out of some executives. What about the cost of training and ramping up these people? How will we have continuity, knowledge retention, and achieve objectives with people blurring their way in and out the door?

Ah. Good questions. But, consider that you’ve missed a significant fact along the way: an individual’s learning curve actually flattens out after about three years, which means that engagement wanes, as does productivity, and quality of work.

Here are some positives about this workforce revolving door. Job hoppers:

Prove to have higher learning curves.
Need to have an impact fast, so tend to be top performers.
Are more loyal because they care about making a good impression in a short amount of time.
Are used to picking up new protocols, procedures, strategies and practices quickly.
Have become very good at the internal consulting skills.
Want to learn as much as possible as fast as possible and create a positive impact.

So, your NEW MINDSET is, at the outset, take advantage (in a good way!) of the new energy continually flowing through your company. You need that energy in this speed-of-light world. View all employees as the smart, savvy contributors that they are, or are hungry to become.

Accept the fact that new employees may not stay for long. Realize that the contribution they will make while they are with you is immense. Recognize that. Reward that.

If you want to foster engagement while they are there and ensure they become ambassadors for life, here are some things you can do:

Have frequent conversations.
Speak openly and honestly with employees about your business.
Allow employees to share their ideas without retribution.
Create ‘knowledge’ groups and think tanks, where people can exchange ideas and solutions.
Provide social outlets – be prepared for the demands of Millennials.
Provide a clear career path. That may not always be possible, so think of ways that people can learn and grow instead.
Demonstrate company values daily (walk the talk).
Be prepared to change tack if necessary.

Do these things, and you will end up going forward with a whole lot of ambassadors for your business. And, if you’re careful to hire people who will put the company’s interest first, who understand and support the desire for a high-performance workplace, 97% of employees will do the right thing. That’s an average you can live with.

It’s a whole new world that demands us to adjust our ideas, perceptions, attitudes, and strategies. Whether an individual or business, if you’d like to begin – or improve – on embracing change for satisfaction and success, please make your FREE call with me. Book a time in my calendar at www.daniellesilvermanconsult.com. I would be honoured to work with you.

Love,
Danielle