With the pandemic continuing to rage, many employers still have their feet firmly cemented in tired and ineffective business models and ways of thinking. Throwing more people, money, and resources won’t help because the rules of engagement have changed. Look no further than the recent report from McKinsey suggests that 40% of employees are projected to quit their current positions in the next 3 to 6 months without another offer to fall back on. Innovative and fresh new ways of strategizing and approaching recruitment and retention strategies must be top of mind. This week we welcome Cara Silletto, author of Staying Power: Why Your Employees Leave and How to Keep Them Longer and president of Magnet Culture, to expose the growing and perplexing problem of recruitment, hiring, and retention.

Resignations have always been a problem in the workplace, but they never posed such an enormous risk to organizations as they do today, Silletto says. Where change slowly progressed through the workforce of the 1960s and 1970s, the convergence of disruptive technology and a global pandemic have accelerated change. From daily events, such as virtual meetings to rampant employee resignations, to a gaping shift in generational thinking, danger lies ahead for leaders expecting “this too will run its course.”

Silletto captures this gap in what she calls T.A.B.L.E. thinking:

Much of the generational difference in thinking is between the Baby Boomer and Millennial Generations. Boomers believe that most of the younger generation doesn’t want to work. Many business owners and managers across a swath of industries share this mindset. Silletto spoke about one client who refused to acknowledge that Millennials didn’t want to work 60-hour weeks simply because they didn’t want to work hard. That wasn’t true – young drivers were willing to work hard but not 60 hours every week. Silletto revealed that it wasn’t a lack of good workers but a business model started 50 years ago for a generation of retiring workers. The problem wasn’t low work ethic but too few trucks. By purchasing more trucks, he opened an opportunity to work just 40 hours, fulfill orders, cut overtime, and fill all the positions. 

In some workplaces, high turnover is unavoidable, such as call centers or retail jobs. Part of this stems from the perpetual change and fast pace of the modern job market. Today the problem is compounded by the short shelf-life of job skills. Many skills are now exhausted after only five years (and technology skills are estimated to last only two and a half years). A recent study from Australia predicts that the upcoming generation will work approximately 17 jobs across five different industries, which is a drastically different work environment compared to older generations that got by with a high school diploma and a lifetime career. Silletto says, employers need to focus on not eliminating turnover altogether but rather simply reducing it a little each year by operationalizing the process. This means budgeting for a large number of new hires and maximizing the productivity from each person rather than spending weeks training employees only for them to resign two days later.

Geeks Geezers Googlization host Ira Wolfe shared his experience with a client that hired nearly 500 people for 60 jobs per year. Rather than forcing a complete remodel of their entire business plan, Ira focused efforts on retaining employees for an extra week, then once achieved another week. The result? Rather than hiring 490 people per year, significantly reducing the churn and cutting 40 weekly training sessions down to 10 per year.