Situation: A company has recently seen the departure of several younger employees. Reasons given were better offers at other companies. These employees have been replaced by what appears to be better talent. The CEO took these departures personally and is concerned about the impact on the departments of those who departed. What can be learned from employee departures?
Advice from the CEOs:
- In working with Millennial employees, it may be necessary to lower your expectations in terms of employee loyalty, work ethic and longevity. Millennials have a different perspective. Recognize this and build expectations around it.
- Be frank with new employees up front. Plan their career progression out 36 to 48 months and let them know that this time will give them great training. If they are interested in the company and career progression beyond this, then the company be open to discussing options with them.
- Use outside resources to do a 2–3-month post-op on those who left, as well as to help monitor employee attitudes on an ongoing basis.
- The outside resource can conduct interviews by telephone, on a confidential basis. The objective will be to assess the reasons why the employees left once the emotions of the action have died down. Summary results of the interviews will not identify the past employee. This will prompt them to be frank with their feedback.
- Similarly, use an outside resource to conduct confidential telephone interviews with random current employees on a periodic basis. Let the employees know that they will be contacted by an outside agency on a random basis, and that their responses will be confidential. The purpose is to gain information on how the company can better address employee needs in the work environment. Only aggregated and summary results will be presented to the company.
- These actions will help to assess whether the departures were an extraordinary event or an early warning of more systemic challenges within the workforce.
- The increased salary needs of those who left may be symptomatic of the current economic conditions.
- Currently, the need of companies to attract talent has increased pressure to raise wages. Along with this and there is increased turnover among employees who believe that they can make more elsewhere. There is little that can be done to run a sensible business while trying to keep up with current salary demands.
- Most companies who survive successive boom and bust cycles do not respond to wage pressure, knowing that each boom will be followed by a bust.
- Once the next bust sets in, wage demands will go down until the next boom cycle starts.
- Should anything to mitigate the impact of employee departure on their departments?
- Keep ears open for any sign of an ongoing impact.
- As above, consider an outside resource to check the temperature of the employees.
- The best mitigation may be a strong integration of the new, energetic R&D employees into the team.
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