3 Reasons Why Your Best Employees Leave for New Opportunities – [Reboot]
Yesterday, I read this article, the “3 Reasons Why Your Best Employees Leave for New Opportunities” (read it first if you can) and I am quite confused by the content. Actually I do agree with the titles of the different sections but I have another vision of what they should mean.
I find that these problems are treated with an old-fashioned vision of what the work is today, especially for youngest generations: the author talks about work in the well-known and «correct» sense of the Maslow pyramid, food -> security -> relations -> accomplishment -> spirituality.
However in our time, this pyramid can be addressed at any level and not necessary in the usual order; in fact today a lot of young people prefer to take a chance to find their spiritual fulfillment despite the difficulties to find food or security. Or at least they are seriously considering it.
Obviously, I cannot speak about countries or territories in war or in a deep poverty state. I can only imagine the pain they are enduring… But it is not the context of the referenced article, so it won’t be mine either.
Let’s go back to the employees’ world. As I wrote, the three items are clearly pointing at the good questions. I fully agree with them, but I think, IMHO, that they are addressed without any link to the two «final» level of the pyramid.
So meet Raphael (me), an employee who wants to quit! … One example amongst many.
1. Employers are not helping them define their career path.
Despite the numerous results of surveys listed in this article, I think it misses the point. It goes without saying that we want to know how our personal and professional future would look like. But the matter is not here. Personally I don’t want a 10 years career plan of what the company expects from me based on my present set of skills or assets. Especially if it is done in a short annual interview with a manager who will not even remember me in one year from now.
What I expect is a clear statement of my company’s mission. Yes, the big picture, but also a projection for the upcoming year. I can do repetitive tasks and keep the same job (job description I mean) even three or four years if I share a common mission with the company and the values that go with it. The classic path of Manager then Director then Chief Officer is no longer my personal dream.
Each year in this interview, it feels like asking a child what he wants to do when he grows up.
It’s not about skills anymore; Skills are the tools we use to accomplish something great for us. I don’t want to be a <type_here_any_job_title> in five or ten years, especially in an obsolescent world where 50% of the jobs categories known today would almost certainly have disappeared then.
So Company, if you have a crystal clear vision of what your mission is and what values you use to fulfill this mission, if you share them with me, and if you move as fast as the world moves in your business, don’t ask me what I want to do in the next 10 or 15 years (Oh my god, 15? Seriously? Some managers around really ask for the next 15 years???).
But instead show me each year the new opportunities of our business and ask me if any of them attracts me (in case of my job doesn’t fit me anymore), or because I am on the field let me inform you of something I have heard that maybe you haven’t..
Whatever the job, whatever the skills needed, if I feel attracted by one, and if I trust the vision of the company and if me and my coworkers are deeply engaged with the values to do it, hell yeah! I will do my best to learn fast, deliver quickly and work hard because your “human value proposition” touches me!
Career is not for me an ultimate goal I want to catch one day, with milestones which help me to choose between 2 or 3 paths. But it is a consistent daily experience and the more fun it is, the more I can get the feeling of accomplishment.
And the more my capacity to learn will increase.
It is not about which skills I want to acquire or hone, it is about which experience I want to live. Skills will come after regardless of the way.
2. Employees’ success is not tied to the company’s success.
I was deeply in tune with the beginning of this point in the original article… Until the second paragraph…
The feeling to be part of the company and contribute to the global impact of it means much more than money.
This is obvious that any job requires well and fair financial reward. But I don’t care about stock options and profits sharing if I am just considered as a pawn.
I prefer less profit and really more decision power, or at least, the possibility to give my opinion in a collaborative space where I can be heard.
Give me the opportunity to participate! Company, you have the vision, I’m in or I’m out, it’s my choice. But If I’m in, let me build the different strategies to achieve the mission!
As I said, I can understand I may have to work on repetitive tasks and focus on execution, because it is the only way to accomplish great things and become more accurate. But If I work every day on it, the probability for me to find a new way for automation, or a new way to optimize the production or a new way to convince a prospect is huge!
So be aware of my work regularly and let me talk to other entities inside the company, even the CEO (why not?), to present my working approaches. And if I have outstanding results, let me participate in creating these approaches in other places with other contexts within the company.
Let me become a coach, or a leader even if I haven’t the hierarchical level yet.
So you want to share the success of the company? I think a good start is to let your employees take decisions and share among themselves those which work. Like skills: money is just a tool, not a goal.
3. Employers don’t promote from within.
This third point is my favorite part! I basically agree with the whole chapter. If we consider that promotion is not necessarily a higher job, but just another job.
But I still have something to say (I know, I talk too much…): in this part, it seems that the author only speaks about existing jobs, or existing ways to perform these jobs.
Of course it is important to have expert in different work areas, and it is equally important to have a proven process.
But if this job is always the same, on the one hand it is only for a given time, nothing stays forever, particularly in our digital world (ask Kodak) and on the other hand it could be certainly automated by a ‘bot.
In the story of Mary, Jeff and Ken in the original article, only the names change, all the jobs stay the same and are done in the same ways.
However, I clearly like the internal hiring principle!
But let people who don’t fit the job on paper do it.
Always the same topic: if someone is really attracted by the new job vacancy after Mary’s departure but hasn’t any skills in this area, why not try to hire him?
Let’s imagine he has many new ideas to do it because in his previous job, in another place, he saw what was the deficiencies of Mary’s job (And I talk about her job and the duties associated, not about Mary, just in case she is reading this) so he thinks he could fix them. That would be great, wouldn’t it?
Obviously, if Mary is a developer, a mathematician or an astronaut, the new one has to master some basics skills of this profession or has to know how to learn them very quickly!
The importance here is to find someone with a different approach of the job.
If Mary is a performer, she can write ( or code if she’s a developer) some processes to do good practices as soon as possible for a newbie (please, I said processes as lean method, NOT as audit or checklist !!). In this way, the newbie can focus on what is wrong with his fresh pair of eyes.
How could you be creative if you always do things in the same way?
And you can imagine a period of pairing with someone from within the company who knows the deficiencies and someone from outside who learnt from other companies.
As I said in the introduction, it is just my humble opinion. But for me: define the next 63 milestones of my next 15 years career, give me stock options with a “thank you for coming” and offer me a new job with the previous performer clothes are not the right answers.
And you, what do you think?
