Talent retention challenge.

Retention culture is a new and trendy term in the employer market. It is nothing more or less than a corporate culture that makes employees want to (continue to) work at your company.

In other words, nothing new, right???

But with the employee labour market we are still in since Covid-19 (more job openings than available candidates) and with the Big Quit (another new word we invented recently ) every business ?in the world is living through, creating a culture that connects people to your organization is more important than ever.

I recently had a talk with a HR director of a multinational and he called a global retention program for his company one of the priorities for the HR department.

So how do you do that?

There is a lot of research done is still going on the subject. The industry, the size of organisation, its location and the way of working naturally have a lot of influence on what will work for your company and what will not.

The interesting conclusion though that there is a simple (do not confuse with easy) roadmap that practically every company can use:

1. Communicate the importance of engagement (the degree to which employees feel passionate about their work, involved in the organization and feel satisfied with their work) and retention culture to all levels of leadership. Company culture is created by leaders, and front-line managers in particular often underestimate their influence in this area with their teams
2. Do an analysis of the current situation. "What doesn't get measured doesn't get managed." If you don't know the current state of engagement and retention in your company, you can't improve or change anything either.
3. Establish feedback/feedforward procedures (if they are not already in place). Very often information within a company has one direction: top => down. Fixed feedback/feedforward frameworks in any form ensure that leaders actually know what's going on. Across the company.
4. Create and support Diversity and Inclusion (DAI – here we go again with a new term??). A recent McKinsey study shows that women and people of other nationalities at entry-levels are more likely to change jobs than white men because they don't get enough support from their leaders.
5. Invest in growth opportunities for your employees. Setting up a L&D (Learning and Development, and I rest my case??) department or own academy maybe a bridge too far for a middle- and small-size company, but establishing a long-term cooperation with a professional coaching&training bureau can be done quite easily these days.
6. Create an "exit and staying interview" file. ?Engage with people who leave, analyse the reasons and make adjustments. As well as ask your “company veterans” for reasons to stay with your company and work on making those reasons bigger and better. ?This data collection is key to awareness on why people leave and why they stay and forms the basis of your retention culture.

Is this strategy going to make sure people never leave you again?

I don't think so. And you shouldn't want to?? either. But if a few that are really good stay, you didn't do it for nothing!

And the sooner you start, the better!

' Start the retention process when the person is still open to staying and not when they've already told you they are leaving'.

Jeff Weiner (Executive Chairman LinkedIn)

Good luck!

Elena