Organizations of today are faced with increased pressure given the impending "rise of resignations." Despite what has been coined as this year's news story, there's enough reason for businesses to take a concerted effort in how we retain talent. My thinking of talent retention goes beyond actual headcount, but rather touches on the preservation of the intellectual property our workforce encompasses. When good talent leaves, quite often a skill set, attribute or specific ability unique to them departs also.
Effective organizations will have the tools, processes, and practices in place to ensure a continuous transfer of knowledge, however, consistent application of this is easier said than done. When creating our unique employee value proposition, we lean into other reward elements, namely providing training and development opportunities. When we as employers begin to fund the courses that are upskilling and enhancing the expertise and credentials of their workforce, we should in turn be expecting an application of these new learnings in the workplace too.
Before rolling out the expectations on the exchange transaction of training and development, organizations must first believe in this philosophy. Consider the following few reasons of why it counts to have employees demonstrate applied learning:
1. Because you paid for it! With stretched salary budgets every dollar counts. This means how we spend and invest. Our investment in our workforce should have an element of ROI. Our equipping employees with the knowledge, skills, and abilities beyond what they have should, by normal calculations, have a reciprocal effect of increased positive output in delivery of work.
2. Increases employee engagement. Having a fulfilling career is often centered around finding one's purpose and meaning. Creating a workplace environment and culture that encourages individuals to teach, leverage, and utilize new techniques and in turn rewards these outputs demonstrates your acknowledgment and value of what they are doing. For an employee, seeing their direct impact creates a greater line of sight, strengthening and empowering their self-worth and commitment towards the organization.
3. Knowledge security - expecting employees to share, educate and document newfound learnings is imperative to ensuring your organization is not left with critical gaps. Employees can sharpen and build their "knowledge tool kit" at our expense but we become exposed and at risk when talent leaves. If and when they do leave, then gone too are the integral steps that reside only in their heads.
As we try to maintain the workforce we have, it is worth the effort to strategize and develop creative approaches to getting more from the investment in our employees. Leveraging goal setting and tying incentives to the demonstration of "how" the learning was used and "what" the outcomes were could be one sure way of retaining stability and security in how you run your daily business operations.
Reena Paul (CCP, GRP) is a Senior Consultant with LifeWorks Compensation Consulting Team. She is passionate about all things “total rewards” and has experience in dealing with all stakeholders of an organization and strategizing optimum client-focused solutions. A lover of data and the story it tells, Reena enjoys the exploration of presenting and discussing compensation with a fresh perspective. Connect with Reena on LinkedIn.
Image source: Unsplash image with credit to Element5 Digital
Hear! Hear!
Yes, Reena, too many organizations still focus on the retention of bodies vice the retention of skills.
At my firm, we think of the retention of Brains And Hearts - we want both the intellectual capacity and the engagement of the person.
As more and more industries move toward a skills-centric view of talent, I think your suggestions will become more crucial.
Thanks for the post!
Posted by: Joe Thompson | 09/03/2021 at 09:56 AM
Number-crunchers can't count skills. KSAs do not appear in inventory categories and balance sheets. Rarely are they monetized (that's another topic!). Assuming the existence of the ideal environment won't work well in the real world, I'm afraid.
As one who has been there and done that for many decades, I have seen my carefully constructed cathedrals of competence completely demolished by careless cost-cutters implementing the commands of owners driven by short-term financial demands. Payroll tends to be the largest expense item in the service industries that currently dominate. Even in capital-intensive organizations, they cut people (the essential muscle) before they cut the bone (the capital equipment that can be operated by anyone).
This is, of course, gross over-simplification; but that's the way the world turns. Talent is not seen as a true "resource" because it is human (soft, variable, inconsistent, uncontrollable, plentiful, etc.) and thus replaceable rather than objects (relatively impermeable, solid, consistent, programmable, reliable, scarce, etc.). Furthermore, people are temporarily rented while things are permanently owned. Talent is a variable expense while things have fixed costs that can be amortized. But enough of accounting and economics.
Uniformed services like the military, law enforcement and other first responders have better talent-retention priorities because they tend to be tax-supported and can thus afford to stockpile talent over the commercial priorities of private firms driven by shareholder/owner values. There is good reason for the relative security of public jobs: talent-retention costs can be shifted more easily in a monopolistic economic environment than in a competitive one.
As a military veteran who has also consulted to every branch of public service, I know their talent management systems rarely rise to the sophistication level of the "war rooms" I have seen in a few corporations; but they painstakingly implement them far more rigorously than the average private employer. They know that their service depends on the talent they retain, so they CARE about that.
These observations are intended to clarify exactly how massive a challenge we Total Rewards folks face in order to actually implement the completely accurate needs Reena so properly identified. No need to list the scores of others who have similarly cried out in the wilderness... don't let her pleas similarly fall on barren ground! This issue haunts us because we have failed to supply effective remedies.
Posted by: E. James (Jim) Brennan | 09/06/2021 at 12:20 PM