Increased employee options and mobility requires new mindset about retention

One lesson that employers are learning in today’s economy is that their workers don’t necessarily need them.

“If you see someone with a 10-year stint on their resume, we are conditioned to think, `What happened there? Why were you there so long?’” CEO Ted Blosser of WorkRamp says. “It’s strange how the world has changed over the last couple of decades.”

He discussed the changing workplace during Future-Proofing Your Retention Strategy, a Sep. 21 webinar sponsored by Lattice. Aleksandra Peters, head of people for Brightline, agrees with Blosser.

“In today’s world, employees have so many different options and are so mobile, so seeing someone stay at a company for 10 years raises questions,” she says. “They don’t have to work for us – they have to want to work for us.”

Simply put, it’s time to rethink long-held assumptions about the employer-employee relationship. It’s unrealistic to assume most new hires will be onboard for the next decade, much less their entire careers.

“I think about the concept of tours of duty of roughly two years in a specific role within a company,” Blosser says. “It’s a joint commitment from employer to employee and from employee to employer. When I think about retention, it’s about how can you make that initial tour of duty great? Can you get them through that first tour of duty, make sure they are extremely happy and get them to the next tour? What’s that next tour going to look like?

“One tour of duty is a great place to be, but if you can get to maybe three, that is icing on the cake.”

Emily Mikailli, senior vice president of people operations for Signifyd, looks beyond just turnover numbers.

“I think about quality,” she says. “Are we retaining our high-quality employees? Are the people we are retaining producing high-quality outcomes? I feel like a lot of companies overly fixate on the numbers, which don’t always tell the whole story. I have a high level of tolerance for change and turnover, because in times of change and growth, which most growing, scaling companies are going to regularly experience, turnover isn’t always a bad thing.”

Mikailli believes employees leave an organization for three main reasons:

• Confusion. “Focusing on clarity of purpose and alignment of values on a company level is so critical. When people don’t understand how their work contributes to the greater company goals, it’s incredibly frustrating.”
• Boredom. “Boredom, or staleness, is a lack of focus on growth and development opportunities.”
• Comfort. “Comfort is the concept of trust and vulnerability in relationships with others, and particularly with their manager.”

It’s hard to overstate the role managerial competence plays in retention.

“I really believe the manager piece is something that stands out,” Peters says. “It’s common to think that employees don’t leave companies — they leave managers. It’s not just direct managers but leadership overall. Leaders can create really powerful cultures and subcultures within the organization, and they can be very positive or very negative. Developing managers and leaders who are aligned with your culture and values is really critical.”

Related: The perks that work to retain employees now

Expectations have changed significantly during the pandemic, Great Resignation and the shift to remote or hybrid work. One of the most powerful ways for companies to retain employees today is to treat them with respect as valued partners in the business.

“Being comfortable in taking a bold stance, especially when it benefits the employees, comes back to you in spades,” Mikailli says. “If you manage people with trust, flexibility, authority and autonomy, they are going to be incredibly loyal to the company, and they are going to step up when it’s needed and do what’s best for the company.”