With January becoming the most popular month for people to job hunt, many employees will currently be feeling the repercussions of employees who have chosen to move on. People tend to leave organisations for two reasons: a lack of career development and training and a lack of variety in their day-to-day work. Combined with the itchy-feet feeling of January, individuals often feel there is no better time to make the change they've been thinking about for months. What's more, careers are becoming more temporal and opportunity specific, thanks to the rise of the gig economy. Two-thirds of millennials think the right amount of time to stay in the same role is less than two years, demonstrating their appetite for change and new challenges.
In this age of the transient workforce, employers are finding it more difficult than ever before to retain their top talent. But there are processes that they can put in place to help resolve this:
- Provide supportive training and tailored development programmes - Adapt your training to individual requirements and avoid a 'one-size-fits-all' approach. For example, if your organisation wants more data analytics services and some IT workers don't have any confidence in this area, create a tailored training programme for them that will develop these specific skills. Up-skilling your IT employees has a number of beneficial long-term effects, such as boosting motivation and improving staff retention.
- Take a multi-channel approach to training - It's vital to take a multi-channel approach to employees' development and provide easy-to-access training and tools to enable them to learn quickly on the job. This can be done via short videos, webinars or getting them to participate in online communities and forums where both colleagues and IT industry peers can share knowledge and best practice. However, make sure that you can support traditional classroom-style training and face-to-face tuition too, as employees at different levels want - and need - vastly different kinds of training.
- Encourage cross-department experience - To keep employees energised and engaged, provide them with opportunities to work on different types of projects and in different parts of the business. A de-motivated workforce will impact the bottom line, but allowing individuals to be involved with projects that require different skill-sets will enhance their personal development. Offering them the chance to move around different departments will also enable them to work with a variety of teams, which increasingly, employees are looking for in their role. It's also important to make them feel part of the success of the organisation, and allow them to contribute ideas.
Where individuals have chosen to move on to new roles, organisations will often need to hire a replacement. Of course, candidates won't always have all the required core credentials on their CV. As such, employers should look to take on individuals that have the aptitude and enthusiasm to learn new skills.
Organisations constantly need to future-proof their workforce, especially when it comes to supporting employees that might be looking for a change. Addressing this directly through upskilling and harnessing each employee's individual talent will help employers retain their staff in the long run, and find the right talent when needed.