– Sonja V. Batten, Ph.D.
After a year and a half of a pandemic, with the vast majority of office workers working from home, employees have had enough time to become clear on what they value in the workplace and to re-evaluate where and how they want to work. Although COVID continues to wax and wane across the country, workers are now feeling confident enough – even in the midst of an ongoing pandemic – to make career changes, much more so than during the first year of COVID. Staff are ready to decide whether to stay where they are or move on to a new opportunity. The major impending turnover in staff that is expected across professional industries has been termed “The Great Reshuffle” (Bloomberg Technology, 2021).
In addition, while some staff hired before the pandemic began may be operating well and able to maintain personal connections with coworkers whom they had met while previously working in person, other new employees have completed every day of their career at a given company as physically isolated remote employees – from orientation through job delivery. This may reduce their connection to coworkers whom they’ve never met in person, as well as loyalty to the firm, making it easier to leave their jobs even after only a short line of experience has been added to their resumes (Browning & Griffith, 2021).
In fact, many companies are finding that turnover continues to increase over the course of this fiscal year and are in the midst of significant recruitment initiatives to increase overall head count to try to offset current and pending turnover. In addition to an emphasis on recruitment, having a concomitant focus on innovations in retention would support continuity of client delivery, maintenance of firmwide culture, and ongoing development of a pipeline of leaders (Company Bug, 2020).
If firms are frequently losing individuals at the middle levels, then the pipeline from junior leader to senior leader will continue to suffer, causing junior staff to feel that they don’t see models of promotion that apply to them. In addition, the resulting slowdown in internal promotion of middle managers to senior leaders due to attrition may result in current senior leaders burning out because only a small complement of leaders are available to share the workload at their level. By investing in a new way of supporting, growing, and teaching rising leaders, I posit that companies could build stability in their middle ranks, reducing turnover costs and building the leadership pipeline for the future (Sahai, 2018).
Especially for firms that cannot compete meaningfully with the salaries provided by their competitors, they may instead need to focus on innovative solutions that employees experience as an investment in their personal growth and advancement, as well as approaches to build meaningful connections to the firm’s culture and teams. This will contribute to the goal of retaining the valuable internal pipeline of future leaders.
Providing focused professional development coaching to mid-level employees who serve as people leaders is one potential approach to add value to the experience and delivery skills of middle managers whom leaders wish to retain. Generally, organizations use external coaches for the development of C-suite or other senior leaders. However, “coaching can have a significant impact in developing employees outside its leadership ranks—such as when used with millennials, who may expect feedback beyond an annual performance review” (Gurchiek, 2016). Millennials rate “the opportunity to learn and grow” as the most important aspect when they are looking for a new job (Rigoni & Adkins, 2016).
Further exploration shows that it is not that millennials are looking for more managerial direction, but that they want more help or coaching with their own personal development (Willyerd, 2015). Companies have an opportunity to address this priority for learning and growth through individualized coaching that provides employees with tailored feedback for their development as leaders. Existing supervisors theoretically have some capability to provide this sort of developmental coaching. However, because of their competing client delivery and business development responsibilities, most leaders are unable to sufficiently nurture the growth of rising people managers to the extent required for increased employee effectiveness, growth of their necessary “soft skills,” and retention.
Thus, developing an internal coaching program for middle managers and people leaders would create the opportunity to develop their leadership potential, while retaining and building the pipeline of the next generation of leaders. Knowing that they were receiving a new and individualized benefit would also have the possibility to increase these employees’ feeling of the firm being personally invested in them as future leaders. In addition, as the leadership and employee engagement skills of these junior people leaders increase, there should be follow-on benefits for the engagement and retention of those staff who report to them now and in the future. If today’s professional companies wish to avoid the great reshuffle happening to them, they might benefit from not looking at retention difficulties solely as a math problem related to how many existing salaries they can afford to increase, but instead considering ways to develop their rising talent in individualized ways that would lead junior and mid-level leaders to know that their development is uniquely valued.
References
Bloomberg Technology. (2021, July). Workforce experiencing ‘The Great Reshuffle’: LinkedIn CEO. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2021-07-28/workforce-experiencing-the-great-reshuffle-linkedin-ceo-video
Browning, K., & Griffith, E. (2021, September). If you never met your co-workers in person, did you even work there? https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/08/business/remote-office-co-workers-working-from-home.amp.html
Company Bug. (2020, February). Why employee retention may be cheaper than recruitment. https://www.companybug.com/employee-retention-may-be-cheaper-than-recruitment/
Gurchiek, K. (2016, September). Should your organization use internal coaches? https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/organizational-and-employee-development/pages/does-your-organization-use-internal-coaches.aspx
Rigoni, B., & Adkins, A. (2016, May). What millennials want from a new job. https://hbr.org/2016/05/what-millennials-want-from-a-new-job
Sahai, K. (2018, January). Reduce turnover with a culture of coaching. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2018/01/29/reduce-turnover-with-a-culture-of-coaching/?sh=c207f4d27f87
Willyerd, K. (2015, February). Millennials want to be coached at work. https://hbr.org/2015/02/millennials-want-to-be-coached-at-work
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