Lend Them A Helping Hand
In one of my previous articles (see Project Managers: Nurturing vs. Hiring) I suggested a strategy called “grass-roots nurturing” which, basically, is all about teaching/guiding the aspiring engineers into positions of management and leadership. I’ve also given a few reasons as to why this strategy might work better than hiring the newcomers. This time, I’d like to offer a few more considerations as to which caveats the strategy of nurturing might entail, and what can be done to mitigate/eliminate them.
Here’s the dilemma. Suppose, a company or a start-up has built a culture of learning. They nurture, train, and maybe even educate their employees from rookies to seasoned professionals. And, what often happens, once a rookie becomes a seasoned professional — or a seasoned professional becomes a rock-star professional — suddenly there’s a reason that this rock-star chooses to leave the company. A lot has been written on the issues of turnover, and retention, as well as on attracting the new hires, and I’m certain that many of you have heard, have read, or have otherwise known about the mainstream ways that the organizations would resort to to keep their nurtured rock-stars. These ways include raising a salary, offering some perks, benefits, etc. And, what pisses me off, is that some companies address the problem of keeping their best employees as merely a percentage that has to be improved at an employer rating site! The problem goes deeper than just improving the figures, as usual. Or, rather, the problem takes us a level higher. If we zoom out, and look at various reasons behind the Brownian motion of people’s joining and parting with their organizations, there’s a class of reasons that constitutes the base for the very reason this high fluidity exists. People come and go because the job market offers plenty of opportunities for hopping. And, why would the market offer plenty of opportunities for switching jobs? One of the fundamental reasons is this: tech as an industry has lots of investment capital pumped up into it. We just happen to live in such times. However, there have been other times in the history. And, there’s no way to tell for how long the job markets will thrive with the openings, let alone with the employers who can “calmly, coolly and professionally” confirm to their current employees, as well as to the new hires, that… their well of abundance is not about to dry up, so to speak, and they are here to stay, no matter which changes befall the investment climates.
What I’ve written above is something that a sensible employer might consider. As for the folks, the people who switch jobs in search for a better work-life balance, or for a better pay, or for a better cultural fit, or for a professional fulfillment, my advice would be: do a thorough background check of your potential employer. As I write this article, my goal is to keep the stance of objective neutrality, and suggest hints/tips that both employers and employees/hirees might find helpful. So, for the hirees: sit down with yourself and define your hierarchy of perks and benefits, so to speak (think the good old Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, or something like that). Your potential employer might be brimming with the perks but are those perks something that you’re really into? Recently, the media have served us a pack of stories dismounting some overblown start-ups, so…. what if the employer you’re going with is not as financially safe and secure as it seems? The media is into what they’ve already dubbed “tech-lash” these days, and I’m wondering as to how far — or how low — this “tech-backlash” would take us. Well, for those who want to go even deeper (or higher), my suggestion would be to look into which industries, businesses, and geographies hold a promise for the future… and there’s no way to provide a cookie-cutter “how to” for this job. Just use your discernment and… intuition.
Back to the employers. Many of you have faced the problems of affordable housing, one way or another (see Further reading section below). And, one of the much-attacked tech giants has pledged to spend a sizable chunk of $$ into solving this problem *after they’ve aggravated it for years*. If you will, here’s a video which tells a story of a solo young woman who lives out of her van while working a corporate job at an undisclosed company, at an undisclosed location in the US Pacific, from what it looks. As a side note, I saw a book titled “Search Inside Yourself” in this video, among the girl’s belongings, ran a search by this book… and I hope to tell you more later :) Here’s another video which tells a story of an attempt to tackle the affordable housing crisis in Berlin. To my mind, a pre-fab on-roof cabin wouldn’t be a sustainable way to live.. but the video just proves how overwhelmingly grave the problem has become in Berlin, too. As for the US Pacific, I’m starting to think that they must be waiting for the forces of nature to sort the housing problems, once and for all. Thankfully, in Berlin things are not as dramatic as they are in the US. And, it occurred to me, that a sensible employer with funds might raise their clout with the employees as well as with the hirees by… taking care of the affordable housing problem for them. I’m not an investment adviser, and, likely, there must be some legal nuances that I’m not aware of… but for the tech employers who are seriously concerned with the well-being, safety and security of people who work for them, it might be worth considering the upsides, downsides, and impediments of procuring affordable housing (or purchasing, or investing into its construction).
And, yet, here’s my word of caution, and I’ve already written on that one in You Go First: the people’s — the employees’ and the hirees’ — personal values and priorities go first. An employer can only provide a safe and secure working environment, and do their due diligence in exploring, revealing, and following through on the ways that go off the beaten track to do just that. Plus, employers might want to do a better job assessing the costs of letting people go and boarding people on. From what I’ve seen, they often underestimate the value of what they call “institutional wisdom” and “organizational memory”… and I hope to write more on the implications of these another time :)
Related:
The Hire Haywire, or Who Hires How
Project Managers: Nurturing vs. Hiring
Integrity: The Costs of Bitterness
5 Things We Need for Sustainable Performance At Work
Continuous Problem-Solving Is No Accident
Further reading:
The Radical Way Berlin Plans To Solve Its Housing Crisis
Affordable housing is disappearing. So cities are designating parking lots to sleep in.
