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Worried about retention? Some news about millennials

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Millennials and careers

 A recent article from Reuters provided some insights into why millennials quit their jobs and just how many of them plan on doing so in the next 2-4 years. First, the numbers:

  • Sixty percent of millennials, those people who are 22-32, have changed jobs 1-4 times in the past 5 years, according to State Street Global Advisors. Could be some of the younger millennials in the survey population were moving from part-time or ‘I needed a job’ jobs, but that numbers should give you pause.
  • If given the choice, 44% would leave their job in the next two years and 66% expect to change their employers in the next 4 years. Not would if they could. They expect to change.

Why? As we’ve all heard, millennials want work that aligns with their values. Old news.  What was interesting is how important it is even to those who are what they call ‘senior millennials’ — those with high-level job titles. Sixty-one percent of them say they’ve chosen not to undertake a task at work because it conflicts with their values. So much for work is not personal.

However, this article points out that isn’t the whole story. Turns out money does matter. A woman quoted in the article only chose to change to a career she thought she would like better when she figured out it was lucrative in the market where she lives. It also notes how often millennials are developing additional revenue streams outside of their jobs. Sounds pretty entrepreneurial to me.

What can you do to keep your millennials around.  Most likely, they will leave you at some point but you can probably extend that timeframe by focusing on three things:
  • Know what your millennials, as individuals, value and integrate that into their work.
  • Give them the opportunity to generate business ideas and be entrepreneurial. Their doing it on the side.  Why not as part of their regular job?
  • Don’t think that all of this takes the place of money.  They want financial rewards for their effort.  What may be different from others is that the rewards need to be aligned with their values, how they are making a difference and the ability to be entrepreneurial at work.
Cheers!
Edith

The Leadership Multiplier Effect

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A third of all CEO’s surveyed by The Conference Board say the most pressing issue they have is attracting, developing and retaining the right talent. Two of the biggest factors in engagement and retention are trust in senior leadership and the relationship people have with their managers. With 75% of employees in a recent Gallup Organization survey reporting that they are unengaged or actively disengaged at work, leadership is not successfully addressing this issue.

Leadership excellence has a multiplier effect on organizations. Investing in developing leaders, increasing the leadership multiplier effect, is a short-term and long-term strategy that allows your organization to adapt and thrive in various economic circumstances by attracting, retaining and engaging your human capital.

What is the Leadership Multiplier Effect?

Resources spent on leadership development have a cascading effect throughout the organization. The effective leader creates exponential value for the organization through his or her influence on the strategy, people and processes in the organization. One leader’s effective decisions and actions has a ripple effect that can impact dozens or hundreds of employees, positively changing business performance for the entire department or business unit. Likewise, the impact of poor leadership decisions and actions can lead to the decreased ability to attract, develop and retain the right talent.

In addition, effective senior leaders model behaviors and skills for other leaders in the organization. They set the tone for the leadership practices that define the organization and its culture. They demonstrate the business skills that address business issues and create innovation. They define and operationalize high performance through their interactions with each other and the entire organization.

As others mature in their leadership roles, their effectiveness is increased for having been effectively developed and for the role-models presented by senior leadership. A cascade is created. With more effective leadership focused on the right things at all levels in the organization, factors impacting business performance improve. Groups led by effective leaders are more engaged resulting in higher productivity rates, increased willingness to give extra effort, and greater acceptance of change. In other words, effective leadership creates an environment that attracts and retains high quality talent.

Ensuring the effectiveness of your leaders is critical whether your business is expanding or contracting. When your business is expanding, bringing on new people, introducing new products, serving new customers, leaders need to integrate and assimilate the growth. They need to plan strategically for growth, effectively develop their teams, establish business practices and maintain the engagement people feel in those initial few months on the job.

When business is contracting, leaders need to manage the change brought on by staff reductions, reduced revenue streams and increased cost constraints. They need to maintain the remaining staff’s focus and morale. Need to maintain customer service levels, identify how to do more with less.

Optimizing the Leadership Multiplier Effect

For the leadership multiplier effect have its maximum impact, leaders must be developed effectively. Effective development includes:

1.  Identifying the core of effective leadership. What makes leaders effective? One way to start thinking about leadership effectiveness is to identify what results you want the leader to achieve and use this to identify behaviors that are effective in achieving those results.

2.   Communicating what is expected of a leader. This communication is not always in words. It’s important to understand that how you select, how you assign resources, what people are held accountable for and how you recognize and reward say a great deal about your expectations of leaders.

3.   Assessing your leaders against your model of effectiveness. If some are less effective than you need, identify a strategy for addressing it. It may be development, assignment changes, or an exit strategy. No matter what strategy seems most appropriate, it should start with a frank conversation with the leader.

4.   Identifying potential leaders within your organization and outside your organization. Do you have the bench strength you need? Also remember that leaders aren’t just those with formal titles but also those in roles that are pivotal to business success.

5.   Developing leadership effectively. Formal learning experiences, business-driven assignments and projects, coaching, mentoring and other leadership development experiences need to align with the business strategy and the expectations you’ve communicated about leadership within your organization. Utilize a suite of development activities that build leaders throughout their careers. Developing leaders is process not an event. You must take a planned approach to leadership development, not one that only addresses obvious flash points that may be ignoring underlying causes.

By taking advantage of the Leadership Multiplier Effect, you will optimize talent and create competitive advantage.

What Millennials Want

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What Millennials WantPricewaterhouseCooper’s 2011 Global CEO Survey says that money is not going to buy  you love with the brightest of GenY/Millennials.   According to the survey, the Millennials biggest retention drivers are training and development and the ability to work in communities of mutual interest and passion.

As a generation who grew up using the internet and social media, they want to connect with other bright people to work on challenges and business problems that are meaningful and important.  They also understand they are being hired for a job, not for a lifetime.  They are keen on building and refining their skills so that they are able to take advantage of opportunities inside the company, and when and if the time comes, outside the company. They have a strong desire for coaching and mentoring.

This reinforces the findings we published last October about leadership in the next decade.  In order to successfully lead this workforce, leaders will need to be highly skilled at:

  • Creating and communicating a compelling vision that will attract the best Millennial talent by connecting with what they find meaningful.
  • Creating collaboration by breaking down silos and utilizing social media and collaboration technologies.
  • Leveraging resources from across the organization to address significant business issues.
  • Managing talent by providing them with cultures that focus on developing talent and careers, building capabilities and capacity through formal and informal development opportunities.

What’s your organization doing to attract and retain the best Millennial talent?

The Story Stays the Same

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man loves his job 396 x 260Gallup’s 2013 State of the American Workplace Report has just been released. Here’s the highlights:

  • 30% of employees are engaged and inspired at work — up from 28% in 2010
  • 18% are actively disengaged
  • 52% are showing up

What drives engagement?

  • Job satisfaction – having a great boss, room to grow and job tasks that are stimulating
  • Workplace culture, especially those that encourage people to voice their opinions and work together.

Before you think about providing free lunches and massages on site, look at how you’re doing on the fundamentals. “If you don’t have those fundamentals, the perks aren’t going to fix it,” says Randy Allen, the associate dean of Cornell University’s Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management.. “You may keep them for a while, but at some point they’re going to leave.”

Enough said?

Not Much of a Carrot

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If, like most people in business, part of your rewards and motivation strategy is the carrot and stick approach, you aren’t going to have much of a carrot in 2013.  

A recent article on NBCNews.com Business notes that no one is going to be jumping up and down because of this year’s average merit increases.  The average, according to experts who contributed to the article, will be — drum roll, please — 3%.  This isn’t much different from what we’ve seen in recent years. Welcome to the new normal. 

As I’ve often said, we really need to look at how to make workplaces great places to work, where people want to bring their A-game.  To create workplaces that create engagement, money is, obviously, not going to be the whole answer.  As you start planning for 2013, take a step back and think about what your engagement strategy looks like because those annual increase conversations aren’t going to be contributing much. Maybe it’s time to start thinking beyond the carrot and the stick.

What Do You Have to Offer Top Talent?

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Hiring is ramping up and as always, highly talented, successful job candidates are in high demand. There never seem to be enough. Even in the depths of the recession we heard that companies had openings they couldn’t fill because they couldn’t find the right candidates.

What if it wasn’t the candidates but the companies? What if those candidates stayed away because they couldn’t see value in what the company had to offer?

When we hire, we tend to look at hiring as a one way street, i.e. I have a need and I need someone who meets my specifications. That’s a problem. Hiring is a two way street. We have a need for someone to meet our specifications. As we should, we always want the best. The most talented candidates also have needs and specifications that they want companies to meet. Top talent has the upper hand in the hiring scenario. They know that what they have is in demand in the marketplace. They can be selective about where they will work.

To attract and hire the best you need to know what you have to offer that’s attractive to a top tier candidate. While money is important to them it is by no means the only thing that’s important. For many, it ranks third or fourth most important.

In order to compete for top talent, define an employer brand. Ask yourself:

  • What are the values, mission and purpose of your organization? Top talent want to be part of a company that is going somewhere that resonates with them. They want to work for a company whose values align with their own. 
     
  • What’s the culture? How do people talk about what it’s like to work for you or your company? Is it a family? Are you at war? Do you work hard, play hard? Cultural fit is a key indicator of a candidate’s long term success. Top talent look for a sense of community. If they can’t identify with your culture or if you can’t define your culture in ways that speaks to them, they don’t want to be part of it.
     
  • What opportunities will they have to grow and develop? Top talent doesn’t want to stagnate. Even if they’re in the same role for five years, they want to know that there is opportunity to grow within that role, to take on new challenges and build their capabilities. 

During the interview process, candidates will ask “what’s the best thing about working here?” Don’t let your answer be just ‘the money’ or some vague answer like ‘the opportunity.’ Be able to articulate a strong brand and provide examples that can bring the brand to life. Show top talent why working for you and your company is the best decision they can make.

Issues 2012: Retention and Engagement

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Workers in America are an unhappy lot. In 2010 The Conference Board reported that only 45% of workers are satisfied with their work, continuing a two-decade trend of increasing dissatisfaction. Think about that. Nearly six out of ten people in our organizations are not bringing anywhere near their best to work.

This statistic tells me that our #1 leadership issue in 2012 needs to be retention and engagement.

Wait a minute. You’re thinking, “In this economy, no one is going anywhere.” Maybe not in the current situation, but it’s beginning to turn around and soon resumes will be hitting the streets. What you do now will impact how many resumes from your team will be in the mix.

What we know about people who are dissatisfied in their jobs is that they will leave — either physically or sometimes worse, mentally. Usually, our best performers are the first to go when they are dissatisfied. They are highly marketable and they know it. On the other end of the spectrum, our poor performers will often not leave but simply continue to be dissatisfied. The bulk of our workforce won’t be the first out the door but will begin mentally shutting down. They will begin to only do what absolutely needs to be done or only what will impact their merit increase. They will come in at 8:00 and walk out precisely at 5:00. And once they see top performers leaving, they too will begin to look toward the door.

As a leader, your new year’s resolution should be to retain and engage the performers on your team. Here are some things to think about: 

      • Look at your team. Who’s a flight risk? Whose departure would significantly impact the business or the team? Who’s not going anywhere but at the same time not as fully engaged as they once were? Create re-engagement strategies and contingency plans if a performer leaves.
         
      • On the chance that a poor performer leaves, how attractive is it for a strong performer to join your team?
         
      • Look at yourself. How satisfied are you? As a leader, your team takes direction from you.
         
      • What vision have you developed and communicated for your organization? Does it make people say “I want to be part of this?”
         
      • People are satisfied when they perceive they are doing something meaningful, have a choice in their work activities, feel they are performing competently, and are making progress. As you set 2012 goals with your team, how meaningful are they? Will the person have a sense of progress?
         
      • Are you giving people a choice in how they run their business or manage their work?
         
      • Do they have the skills and knowledge to perform competently? Are they able to use their strengths? Are you helping them build their capacity through coaching?
         
      • Have you spoken with people about how they perceive their current work and working environment. What interests them about it? What frustrates them? Have a conversation and create a plan together to build on what’s good and address what can be changed.
         
      • Finally, don’t throw money at it, unless that is the real issue. Money will only work in the short term. Meaningfulness, choice, competence and progress will motivate people in the long term.

What Millennials Want

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What Millennials WantPricewaterhouseCooper’s 2011 Global CEO Survey says that money is not going to buy  you love with the brightest of GenY /Millennials.   According to the survey, the Millennials biggest retention drivers are training and development and the ability to work in communities of mutual interest and passion.

As a generation who grew up using the internet and social media, they want to connect with other bright people to work on challenges and business problems that are meaningful and important.  They also understand they are being hired for a job, not for a lifetime.  They are keen on building and refining their skills so that they are able to take advantage of opportunities inside the company, and when and if the time comes, outside the company. They have a strong desire for coaching and mentoring.

This reinforces the findings we published last October about leadership in the next decade.  In order to successfully lead this workforce, leaders will need to be highly skilled at:

  • Creating and communicating a compelling vision that will attract the best Millennial talent by connecting with what they find meaningful.
  • Creating collaboration by breaking down silos and utilizing social media and collaboration technologies.
  • Leveraging resources from across the organization to address significant business issues.
  • Managing talent by providing them with cultures that focus on developing talent and careers, building capabilities and capacity through formal and informal development opportunities.

What’s your organization doing to attract and retain the best Millennial talent?