With half of employees surveyed reporting they are looking for a new job in 2021, and more than 60% of millennials reporting they are actively seeking new opportunities, retention of top performers will be more important than ever. The global pandemic has only heightened this surge of pending turnover, and it is costly.
According to SHRM, the average cost to replace an employee (including the search process, training, and lost productivity) is six to nine months of an employee's salary – yikes!
Performance management is often viewed as a business-outcomes strategy to improve productivity, quality, and efficiency. Good performance management can influence all those things, but it can also impact who is engaged at work and who stays.
Millennials and Gen Z entering the workforce in increasingly larger numbers sounds something like this:
What do we want? Feedback & Development Opportunities!
When do we want it? Now!
Frequent, focused, future-oriented feedback is what employees are looking for. I love how Gallup frames this; they want a coach not a boss. Bosses oversee, enforce, and override. In contrast, coaches listen, support, and develop.
Many managers are well intentioned and under resourced. They may be caught in the middle between company leadership and the front line, and many have never received management-specific training. Yet, they have a massive impact on the success of an organization.
In fact, managers account for 70% of the variance in team engagement.
Providing support to your managers for them to grow their skills in having productive, developmental, compassionate conversations allows them to step into a coaching role. Effective coaches develop retention-boosting relationships and collaborate with their employees to effectively set and achieve goals.
According to Gallup, 59% of millennials reported that opportunities to learn and grow were extremely important to them in the job application process. Additionally, 87% of millennials rated “professional or career growth opportunities” as important in their job. As younger generations enter the workforce, professional growth opportunities are only becoming more and more important.
So, organization leaders, managers, and HR teams: here is what I would encourage you to consider. Have an intentional, annual, separate career conversation with your top performers. While tempting, do not try to sneak this into a performance review conversation or promotion and pay conversation. Make the career conversation a stand-alone discussion.
Ask your employee about their strengths, their visions for the future, and how you can support them in getting there.
Try these prompts to get the conversation going:
Now here is the important part: Listen to their answers. Write them down. Your employee has just provided you with a development-oriented blueprint on how to retain them.
You may not be able to offer every opportunity they are looking for, but focus on where you can develop their roles, responsibilities, training etc. in a way that is mutually beneficial to the person and the organization. Help craft their role to connect with where they find purpose. Are there conferences or seminars they want to attend connected to their goals? Are their people in the company they can shadow, mentor or be mentored by to grow? What about continued education in the form of certificates, programs, and coursework?
For example, in my twenties I worked at a public university that did not have the funds to support travel to conferences or the breadth of staffing in the department for me to grow into new titles or roles.
Instead, my supervisor and I identified ways to adjust my workflow to create designated learning times. I put a two hour hold on my calendar each week to focus on expanding my knowledge on topics connected to my goals. Some weeks I would spend that time reading newly published research on student development. Sometimes I would meet with someone on campus who I wanted to learn from and interview them about their experience, skills, and journey. Other times, I would work with faculty in my department to brainstorm opportunities to better support our students. Not only did this keep me engaged in a high turnover role for years longer than I might have lasted otherwise, it also greatly benefited my employer. As I developed into a more well-rounded practitioner, I was able to contribute in complex, nuanced, and novel ways.
It did not cost them a dime, just trust in my autonomy and commitment to my growth.
What has been your most impactful experience with professional development? Who in your life cares about supporting your growth and future?
Looking for more inspiration on facilitating career conversations? Check out Chapter 26 of Gallup’s book, It’s The Manager.
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