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Coaching employers in the value of employee retention
Editorial by Christian Saint Cyr
National Director / Canadian Job Development Network
Recently, EY Canada (formerly Earnst and Young), published the EY 2023 Work Reimagined Survey, exploring the numerous ways employment is changing and what leading employers are doing to stay on top of this transformation.
One of the questions raised in the research is: ‘How can organizations reinspire their workforce after years of disruption?’
In the career development sector, we spend a lot of time discussing how employers can do a better job in recruiting workers but provide little direction in how to retain their existing staff. While this may not be tied to our metrics (how many people we can see get employed) by assisting employers with this challenge, we can build credibility and trust.
According to the EY 2023 Work Reimagined Survey, “the number of employees who say they are willing to leave their jobs in the next 12 months is still relatively high (34%), though lower than in 2022 (43%). Pay continues to be the primary concern for employees, while employers rank it third.”
While an employee’s preference for better salary and increased benefits has always been a major factor in whether to stay with their existing employer, there are factors which will over-ride the desire for better compensation.
Historically, employers of apprentices, for example, have had much better retention than other employers. When sponsoring an apprenticeship, an employer makes a commitment to train and coach an employee, as well as provide time-off for professional upgrading. This is a simple solution for other types of employers.
A key employee-retention strategy is simply investing in a staff members professional development. This can be done in one of three ways:
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Subsidizing or paying for professional development: While some employers will set aside a dollar amount the employee can take advantage of, if they build this into their performance development process, and actually suggest training options, this support will assist the employee with their advancement within the organization. Ideally, the employee will feel better supported.
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Have an open dialogue about where your employee’s career is going: It’s said that every great leader should have a ‘second in command’ who has all the right skills and abilities to take over for the leader, should they leave. This concept works in reverse. Every employee should be fully trained to step into their next role when the opportunity arises. If this is done well, people will continue to stay in a role, looking past other opportunities, hoping to move on to the next stage of their career.
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Every employee should have a career plan: It’s certainly helpful to know what your next job is going to be and to train for it, but an employee is not only thinking about their next job but also the rest of their life with all of the other life factors rolled into one. An employer should have a career plan for each employee that factors in career advancement, professional development and regular communication. This plan should be the core of their regular performance reviews and not simply a critique of their current performance.
In the EY Survey, a key concern for employees is that they be recognized as a ‘human being’ by their organization. Small- and medium-size employers are in a far better place to do this than a large corporation. By investing in professional development and actively supporting employees in their career goals, employers can accomplish this.
Unfortunately, we live in a less than perfect world. Leaders often don’t train their ‘number 2’ to do their jobs because they like to be perceived as irreplaceable. In many cases, employers don’t dialogue future opportunities with their employees because they would prefer the employee stay in their current role forever and employers also don’t develop long term career plans because they can’t accommodate future growth or because they would rather use a performance review to stamp out bad behaviour and have a more compliant employee.
Yes, this is the reality for many in our current labour market. Employers are resistant to change and even though they may say they’re desperate to find new employees, have they demonstrated they are willing to do what it takes to establish themselves as ‘an employer of choice’ in their market share?
As career professionals and job developers, we need to come alongside employers and acknowledge that they want to make a change but also be frank about what that change looks like.
To help facilitate this, we can urge an employer to consider that if they adopt more positive retention policies it will save them time in recruitment, onboarding, and training.
It would also be helpful to stress that by better supporting existing employees, we can demonstrate to the community the benefits of working for our organization; in essence, become an employer of preference.
Also, by investing ‘time’ in discussing professional development, succession planning and career advancement, we can hope to achieve salary parity within our sector rather than the costly strategy of trying to pay our employees more than our chief competitors.
Employees need to feel recognized by their employer. While better benefits and higher wages have been the historical ‘go-to’ for an employer pressured by the changing job market, sincere appreciation of a person’s work, little demonstrations of interest in their employees (and their lives) and a genuine commitment to the career development of their employees would go far to help in developing sense of commitment and loyalty.
We’ll be discussing how employers can better retain their existing employees in this morning’s meeting of the Canadian Job Developers Network, today Monday January 15th at:
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8:30am Pacific
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9:30am Mountain
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10:30am Central
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11:30am Eastern
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12:30pm Atlantic
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1:00pm Newfoundland
Click here to join the session
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