The Future of Employee Retention

Sent to you via Google Reader The Future of Employee Retention Does Employee Retention Matter Anymore? Do you know what’s worse than losing your best employees? Keeping your worst. Even amidst the current recession with unemployment numbers among the highest they’ve been in my life time top talent is hard to come by, especially if you have the newer skill sets and experience needed by socially connected corporations. And when the recession finally does come to an end, years from now (5 to be exact), things won’t be any better. Baby Boomers who were forced to put off retirement will finally retire (although not in the way we traditionally think of it). Millenials won’t have the experience to fully fill the gap left by Boomers and there aren’t enough of Gen X to fill the gap. Technology and outsourcing won’t fill the gap either, if anything I predict they will make the need worse, creating an even greater skills gap. So with all of that you would think that employee retention would be one of the most crucial goals for companies but I think this is misguided. Why? Because, no matter what you do, most of your top talent will eventually leave. Especially those stop gap employees that are part of Gen X. It’s nothing personal, Gen X, as a whole, is just incapable of forming the loyalties that generations before us had. Even Millenials are showing signs of a renewed loyalty. With that in mind is there a better way to think about employee retention? I think so. Instead of focusing on retention I think companies need to think about a greater level of value creation by focusing on creating Knowledge, Networks and New Opportunities. Create Knowledge: For the time that you have that top tier talent you need to focus on creating and capturing knowledge. One of the most valued assets that an outside hire brings with them is a fresh perspective and an influx of new ideas. Use those fertile years to create as many new solutions, products and programs as possible. You’ll have time to vet and execute on those ideas even if the person leaves before seeing them through. But if you fail to capture those ideas and document them well you not only wasted all of that time and resources you spent to bring them on there’s an even greater opportunity loss. Who knows what gems you could have pulled from their heads. This isn’t as daunting of a task as it used to be. The rise of collaboration software makes this virtually drop dead simple. Even if it falls outside of the realm of their job description idea creation and collaboration doesn’t have to be a full …