ReTension

Everywhere you look on media there seems to be an article about the great resignation, the Tsunami Turnover, and people changing jobs left and right on LinkedIn. Is this good or bad? All sorts of people have opinions on why this is happening, much of it to do with the COVID crisis. Many people realized how short life is and they want to spend their time hustling for themselves and following their passions. Some people may have been furloughed or laid off and when companies attempted to call them back, they moved on. Recruiters are offering sign-on bonuses, more competitive salaries, benefits and realizing the competition is fierce, many companies are offering additional perks to attract talent, including the option to work remotely indefinitely to help employees feel more in control of their lives with a flexible arrangement. Smart.

While these recruitment tactics are all well and good, what’s been especially interesting to me is the response of companies and leaders in an effort to retain the people they have. Notice I didn’t say talent. I said people. With the constant turnover, recruiters can’t keep up with open roles and competition, leaders are desperately trying to just hang on to their people.

This is where I predict that the desperate actions to just retain bodies today will cause even more problems for tomorrow.

People are promoting people just to keep them. People who don’t deserve it, people who are terrible leaders, but the knee jerk fear of leadership is rising these same people up the ranks. To avoid what? Role openings? Work not getting done? Do they think that will really help them drive the business and inspire people to innovate and be motivated to produce?

This is the most short-sighted and unfathomable action someone could take. See, all this is doing is putting a band-aid on to heal an open, festering wound that needs way more treatment than that. The band-aid might catch a little, but eventually in the not too distant future, the wound will get worse, infected, and keep bleeding. What you need is to heal the wound, by finding out what’s causing it to begin with. Figure out the secret ingredient of antibiotic ointment.

People are leaving companies and teams because they aren’t happy, they don’t feel valued, they have too many layers of bureaucracy and no autonomy to have ideas or have their voice be heard. Most people do not leave for more money and promotions. Google it, the research is there. Now more than ever with the new found sense of carpe diem in a post COVID world, people want a healthy and flexible work environment and aren’t going to put up with archaic models of hierarchy and bad leadership anymore.

But then when you promote people just to keep people, you’re perpetuating a cycle of poor leadership which will be extremely hard to retreat from once you’ve taken these actions. In fact, likely more good people will continue to leave and all you’ve done is push them further out the door.

But what do we do? We have so much work and can’t keep up with recruiting and filling roles and…well, how do we heal the wound? Now we’re talking…

1. Prioritize the work. You can’t possibly keep promoting people and throwing money at them enough if the work keeps piling up because you don’t have enough resources. Something’s gotta give. Prioritize and set realistic timelines and have the courage to tell your leadership here’s why we can’t get to this now. We’d love to, but here’s the reality. Don’t let fear overcome you to not have this conversation. Fear of leadership getting angry or creating tension is just borrowing trouble. Show the business case and it shouldn’t come as a surprise that a lot of people are having this same issue these days. Hopefully your leader isn’t one of those who got promoted just to keep and will listen. If they don’t, then go around them to their leader or HR. Burning your people out will turn them out. The cycle will only continue.

2. Find out why. Why are people leaving. Talk to your frontline employees, not leaders. Leaders won’t tell you it’s because of them. You need to get to the source. Too much work? No flexibility in WFH or schedule? Voice not heard? Whatever it is, get to the root cause NOW not when you’re people are starting to look for another job. You’ve already lost them by that point.

3. Retention should start from day one. From the moment you hire your new talent, you need to invest in them. Invest in their growth, be proactive about evolving their skills, connecting often and helping them be successful. If you do this right, you won’t have to worry about a retention strategy because you’re cultivating a healthy workplace and cohesive team. Too many people avoid doing this and think suddenly trying to throw money or titles or perks at them when they’re already apathetic, unmotivated and job hunting will work. Counter offers and other too little, too late efforts such as promising them promotions, career pathing and suddenly giving them the recognition they deserved all along might buy a little time, but you’ve already lost their hearts and it’s only a matter of time before they inevitably move on anyways.

Being a proactive and engaged leader from day one with your people will help build a strong team who will be more likely stay and help weather the storms of change together.