Retaining talent has become the most critical priority for all organizations. with buzzwords like “The Great Resignation” and “Quiet Quitting” cropping up every day, it has become a nightmare for leaders to retain talent. The usual tricks that used to work like an incremental hike in salary or an illusion of a near-distant promotion are no longer working.
The social lubricant of chilling with coworkers or whining about the job or boss that used to hold people back is becoming scarce with remote work or hybrid work models. And the fact that employees are getting time to reflect on their personal goals and life’s purpose is also helping the cause. Existing HR strategies to retain talent while still effective to some extent, need a serious revision for the post-pandemic workplace.
In the context of retaining talent, we can view employees across two broad categories. The Sundar Pichai, who sees his future in the company and you see them as a viable C-Level prospect for the future. And the Elon Musk, who has a strong vision of their own lives and their stint at your company is more of a means to an end. While most talent retention strategies do not even acknowledge the presence of the Elon or simply assume that it is the job of the employee to see themselves growing in the company, it would be too idealistic to think that the second category is insignificant in the whole scheme of things.
Retaining the Sundar Pichai is fairly straightforward and can be tackled through mechanisms like providing a clear career progression plan, revisiting roles and responsibilities to see how the pandemic has changed the nature of their work, taking burnout as a serious cause for concern and building leeways to self-manage stress and burnout. Increasing compensation is a tried and tested technique that has worked for generations. Newer techniques like conducting periodic stay interviews can also help.
Retaining the Elon is the tricky part. While it is not an ideal scenario to be dealing with an employee who doesn’t see a future with the company, realistically this is where most of your employees would fall under. Overseeing this key aspect and forcing every employee to treat their job as the top and single priority of their life or make adjustments to their personal goals to extend their stint by a few years is not going to work. A smart retention strategy should accommodate for this category of employees and actively try to understand how the company could further the interest of employees all while retaining them for their quality work.
Someone who wants to be an entrepreneur is sure going to quit someday. But what would benefit both the employee and the company is for the employee to test their entrepreneurial skills and for the company to employ the services of a future CEO at a nominal cost. Not knowing or ignoring the Elon simply creates an unnecessary information asymmetry that does not help either parties and hurts both. And when the day comes for the employee to build their own company, you have got a CEO brand ambassador.