3 Reasons Why You Are Losing (and likely not attracting) Top Talent

By Zachary Barker, Executive Director, GROWEDO

In many “small” (<1M population) and rural cities, the battle for talent – attraction and retention – is the primary blind spot of a localized economic development plan. For decades, EDO’s have been focused on real estate and property taxes as the tool used in their growth efforts. Today, communities, especially small and rural, have a bigger problem than quality real estate. They are losing their top talent – and it is not due to a lack of good commercial space.

In a time of economic prosperity, locally and nationally, it is easy to measure community development success in the number of new hotels going downtown or the expansion of a local warehouse. Economic indicators have commonly been focused around property utilization and growth, as it most consistently and directly correlates to property taxation.?Additionally, historically, real property has served as “the measure” of wealth creation and retainment, employment growth, and access to resources.

As a result, economic development incentives often focus on attracting and retaining businesses leveraging property tax incentives such as TIF, PILOT, and other abatements. Few EDO’s embrace talent-focused approaches to attraction and retention, or are open-minded to establishing talent development pipelines to feed their existing or emerging ecosystems.

Yes, measuring economic impact is much easier in a presentation to the Mayor, stakeholders, or city council when its “just about the numbers”, yet, the reality our business owner’s and startup innovators face is one of increasing brain drain, disengaged or uninspired workforce, and misaligned skillsets. Policies and policymakers that continue to incentivize new builds (or the occasional rehab) and fail to meet the most pressing need of today’s businesses. It fails to answer the most critical question: “How do I find great talent and how do I keep them?”

It fails to answer the most critical question: “How do I find great talent and how do I keep them?”

To answer that question, we must first understand our rising talent.

AUTHENTICITY

Being the most educated generations – Gen X to Millennial - these gold collar talents are seeking transparency and authenticity in a city. Many are open-minded to living or staying in smaller communities that lack some glamour if the city presents a lifestyle that is consistent with their values, the community brand, and the cultural reality of the community itself. Most gold collar talent is less critical of what the culture of a community is, rather, more concerned that the community is authentic and honest about its culture.

In recruiting, if your strategy is to sell your targeted talent on “living in Music City”, then their access to a music lifestyle – concerts, musicians, venues, etc. – had better be easy to attain and engage.?If not, you can expect outspoken anger, as well as a likely imminent exit from the community.

COMMUNITY

The emerging talent generations demand social interests to be at the center of a community.?The most central idea is inclusion. Now, there is an expectation of accessibility to city leadership, participation in clubs and organizations, even as far as a demand that they are invited to participate, rather than have to ask.?These gold collar talents expect you to see them and invite them, as well as be welcoming and inclusive when they put forth the effort to participate.

Ironically, in many smaller communities, the culprit of exclusion is the emerging talent itself that has been selected by the existing power players. These are the peers of your sought-after talent demographics, yet, they are already in position and aligned with existing powers making them act more like the “Good Ol’ Boys” than the welcome wagon recruiting and retaining your best talent.

Not sure what that looks like? See if the same handful of people are the ones always being nominated and awarded by the varying "established groups."

PROFESSIONAL MOBILITY

The talent challenges - attraction and retention - facing small and rural America are commonly related to professional mobility. When communities have fewer or smaller companies, their professional growth opportunities become stifled. Many companies will have entry-level jobs, as well as a few promotions to keep people moving upward. Yet, around 28-35 year of age, quality talent will desire (or often be qualified) to assume quality roles in management and leadership, yet, due to a lack of density of companies, those roles will be limited and often occupied by someone with greater tenure, who is still long from retirement.

Lacking upward mobility, talent will seek lateral mobility – an opportunity to switch companies that have greater upward mobility. For some with an ecosystem that has a robust entrepreneur development program, innovation and business creation has an opportunity to fill the gap… but is only sustainable if the support systems are in place to accelerate the person and the business.?Those lacking the entrepreneur support system and having few companies to provide lateral movement will force the talent to look outside the community, prompt a relocation, and begrudgingly support a near community in filling their talent needs.

Lacking upward mobility, talent will seek lateral mobility – an opportunity to switch companies that have greater upward mobility.

Dang!?Another one of our emerging talents has left.

Inherently, many small and rural communities are able to offer unique, invaluable, and desired benefits to gold collar talent.?When authentic, they provide emotional connectivity and community pride within the person. When inclusive, they are easy to become a “local”.?When economically diverse, they offer 360-degree mobility to grow, as well as take risks in entrepreneurship.

Many economic development organizations recognize talent (aka workforce) as a key to their success. Still, most fail to design talent recruitment and retention strategy, also overlooking the need for a Talent Director who focuses on aligning resources, building systems, and creating access for talent-seeking engagement, both new talent and existing.

Make you wonder… if talent quality is at the center of all business success and community growth, why don’t we build systems to meet that need?

______

Zachary Barker serves as President of Startup Support Center, an economic development consulting group providing startup programming and support, technology recommendations, and access to industry leaders for the purpose of empowering local economic development organizations to successfully and independently operate startup growth programming.?Zachary is a graduate of the?Oklahoma University Economic Development Institute (OUEDI)?with over 20 years of experience in community building, growth training, developing entrepreneurial communities, corporate attraction, talent recruitment, and technology use.

He most recently was a featured speaker on “Creating a Culture of Innovation Within Your Entrepreneurship Center” at the International Conference on Business Incubation presented by the International Business Innovation Association (InBIA).

#economicdevelopment #econdev #EDO #communitydevelopment #smalltowndevelopment #attraction #recruiting #talent #workforce #startups #entrepreneurship #BRE #businessretention #OUEDI #growedo #growth #communitybuilding #incentives #opportunityzones #TIF #PILOT #ruraldevelopment #technology #IEDC #GSD #GBP