One of the conversations we have with more and more of our clients is around their frustrations and difficulties related to retaining talent in the workplace. How to retain talent when they are always leaving (or never staying long enough).
The Problem
Effort is put into the attraction and recruitment of the best individuals possible for roles within the business. These efforts may include sign-on bonuses, incentives, and even salaries at the upper end of the market band. All of these costs are incurred anticipating a return on investment when the talented individual stays beyond a certain reasonable period – usually 24 – 36 months.
Increasingly, young mobile talent is rotating out of a position within 18 months, or expecting to be promoted – failing which they will rotate out.
These numbers don’t align, but cutting down on the “sugar” to attract these individuals will result in them not coming.
Similarly, it is not really possible to adjust the role expectation in order to achieve a return on investment within 18 months (they will effectively need to have covered their investment cost in 12 months in order to generate “profit” in the remaining 6 months).
The Solution
Adjust your view of Talent Retention.
Traditional talent retention has been linked to having the person sitting in a seat in your business. What if that changed and Talent Retention is about them having you in their heart regardless of where they work?
We need to develop Talent Alumni Programmes as part of our talent retention activity.
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When Talent leave we should structure the exit interview so that they walk out of the door as ambassadors of our organisation.
Talent runs in herds – talented people have talented friends.
The strategic objective of a Talent Alumni programme as part of a retention strategy is that it keeps your organisation engaged with the talent herd or social network. That way when one of the herd is looking for a new position your organisation is promoted by the alumni you keep engaged.
The Toolkit
- Create an Alumni newsletter that shares some inside info on the business that they wouldn’t just get through the media
- Have an Alumni portal on your website that
- offers first looks at new positions opening up,
- has a place for them to network with other alumni,
- allows them to suggest ideas that interface with your innovation process.
- Host regular Alumni events where they are kept up to date with the business and are offered career and professional development input – events where you invest in them even though they don’t work for you anymore.
Contact the TomorrowToday Global team and ask for Raymond to come around and discuss how we can support your Talent strategy, and how to develop and roll out an effective Talent Alumni programme. You can also download our free ebook, Talent Re:Defined here for a new framework and fresh perspective.
