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Retention in the Time of Covid
If you and your firm have strong retention right now, you are doing better than the majority of companies.
American workers are “jumping ship” in record numbers. There are two primary drivers of this:
The past year of lockdown and work-from-home hit the reset button on many people’s work/life balance.
As the economy revs up in recovery, wages and other compensation have gone up, since workers are in high demand.
To keep your people happy—to keep your people at all—you may need to make some changes. As leaders, we need to make sure we have effective, two-way communication with our people. We need to have this communication, and we need to use it.
Find out what they are looking for in their careers—right now, and over the next decade. What can we offer to make sure they are motivated and fulfilled with our company? ASK THEM. People will stay with a firm if they feel they are valued and respected, compensated fairly, and that the path to the success and fulfillment that they want is open to them with your team and the company. For some people, that now means a healthier work/life balance, so they are looking for flexible hours and adaptations to partly remote work. If you don’t offer it to them, the chances are that your competition will.
Some employers hesitate to make the changes their younger staffers are looking for. “We’ve never done it that way,” or “Back in my day, we ‘paid our dues’ working long hours on the crappiest parts of projects,” or “Do you know how much an in-house daycare facility would cost?”
Employers who don’t accommodate the needs of their employees may find that their top talent—the ones who are in high demand—won’t stay long in a workplace that isn’t giving them what they need. And since the cost of replacing a valued worker who leaves can often be about 30%-70% of their annual salary, the cost of doing nothing may be much more than the cost of keeping your team happy, motivated, productive… and retained.
(Photo by Andre Benz on Unsplash)