4 Ways to Keep Your Employees From Leaving

Turnover is high in Silicon Valley and elsewhere among highly skilled and experienced workers. Even firms with stellar reputations, excellent benefits and good pay are feeling the pain.

There are a number of reasons for this high turnover, but the primary one is the new sense of freedom people feel. Many younger workers have decided not to purchase homes or cars, are not married (or at least do not have children) which gives them flexibility. And both younger and the more experienced workers have developed a new philosophy about work. They believe they should be working on projects that are stimulating and that expand their knowledge. Once they are given routine work or are forced to stay in one position, they often start looking for a new opportunity.

There is also the lure of startups that offer big challenges and long hours but also potentially financial gain. But the biggest of their lures are the collaborative environment of a smaller group and the learning that they offer. Everyone takes on tasks they are not skilled at and are required to learn fast. This gives people both new skills and a better understanding of all the parts that make up a company.

The days of company loyalty and hierarchy have been dead for a long time, but we are just seeing what that means. And it means that every company has to start thinking differently about how they develop, excite and challenge their workers and how they complete with startups.

I was speaking recently with an engineer who was in the midst of deciding whether to accept an offer from a startup or stay with his well-respected large company. He was generally very happy with his employer and enjoyed the working environment and resources it provided. He knew that by going to a startup he would be leaving a great work environment and many intangible assets. As I listened to him, I filtered out four things his company could do to keep him –if only they understood!

None of them costs much and none of them are really very hard to do. But, to put them into place does require a change of mindset and a willingness to break (or at least stretch) the rules.

Here are the four things I think could be done to keep this person, and probably most others.

  1. Offer the opportunity to move within the company easily, with minimal bureaucracy, and without time constrictions. His major reason for even listening to the startup recruiter’s offer was his desire to for a new opportunity. He had been working in one area for 2 years and was getting bored. He did not see any place to move to within the company. The rules required him to notify his boss that he wanted a change, required him to fill out a form and then to go through an interview process internally. And, of course, if he didn’t get the job his boss would know that he wasn’t happy. Not a situation he wanted to be in. He had looked at other job opportunities within the organization via the company’s Intranet, but the ones that seemed exciting required skills or experience he did not have. The recruiter promised him the chance to work on an exciting project with a guru who would act as a mentor and coach and he didn’t have to tell his boss he was interviewing.

    Why can’t organizations guarantee internal candidates a new job periodically if they want one? The idea is to keep up the excitement and the freshness that comes with a startup, combined with the stability of the larger organization.

  2. Educate employees all the time. Make sure they have time for exploring new opportunities within the company and learning new skills. Make learning available in every imaginable way – formal and informal or with mentors and coaches. Education and development are the cheapest retention tools in your arsenal. Employees in startups are most likely way too busy working to have time for self-improvement. This is a BIG plus for the large organizations and you should be capitalizing on this right now.

  3. Help every employee build an internal social network. The employee I talked about above was clearly devoted to his fellow employees and felt a strong attachment to them. This was one thing that was keeping him from instantly accepting the other offer. We all know how powerful networks are and companies that actively promote employee interaction and teamwork have less discontent and less turnover than those that keep employees apart or at odds. Create more cross-functional teams and encourage collaboration. Set up work as much as possible in teams and even encourage competition between teams.

  4. And finally, offer flexibility in lots of ways – in benefits, in vacation, in working hours, in where they work. Not allowing employees to work from home or have flexible working hours is a sure way to increase turnover.

These are the only ways that you will beat the startups and the companies that have already figured these things out. No matter how much these changes may irk senior leadership, they need to understand that by sticking to the traditional rules they are holding back their firms competitiveness.

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