In the past the greatest aspiration was to have a career in a permanent life-long job. However, the last few decades have drastically changed the labour market, which has become more and more fluid and less bound to the customs of the past.
Leaving a job after a few months or a few years is no longer something to be looked at with suspicion, but the norm in many sectors. Some people leave a company to improve their professional status, others to gain more flexibility in their working hours or because they are looking for change and new challenges.
Panta rei. Everything flows and nothing stays. Even in the working world.
Millennials – born between 1981 and 1996 – are also known as “The Job-Hopping Generation”. They feel detached from their companies, undervalued and often annoyed by the lack of inclusiveness.
Gen Z – born between 1996 and 2012 – have a more stable view of the future, but very high expectations of the workplace compared to previous generations.
A continuous staff turnover can translate into a cost for companies: talent is lost, efforts to create a corporate culture are thwarted and very high employee turnover rates can lead to huge costs for back office, recruitment, training and onboarding.
It’s therefore imperative to find new ways to retain employees, turning long-standing teams into value points in the eyes of potential job seekers.
Employer branding is a strategy very close to marketing that improves the employee, recruiting staff and customer’s company perception, just as a positive climate is truly effiecient in demostrating how the company values and culture are shared between workers.
Here are some useful hints:
1. Re-evaluate salaries and bonuses
It may seem obvious, but the monetary aspect remains among the competitive advantages of a company both towards its employees and potential future employees. If increasing salaries isn’t possible, bonuses are a good alternative: the important thing is to set them on achievable targets.
2. Allow flexibility
Smart working, hybrid work, the possibility to choose the most suitable tools for each project: flexibility can take many forms and listening to your employees is the first step to discovering their real needs.
3. Giving and receiving feedback
Communication is a two-way process: it’s therefore necessary to learn to receive positive and negative feedback, as well as to give it. Such conversations can lead to critical issues that are crucial to the improvement of workplace quality and productivity.
4. Offer benefits and perks
Discounts in certain shops, in-house day-care, a larger car park, extra holidays, etc. What are the ‘privileges’ that might be of most interest to employees in a company?
Again, listening to employees to find out which “privileges” would improve their working life is a key step.
5. Encourage training
Studying is not only a way to improve productivity: it helps stimulate creativity and develops a critical sense. Activating tools to spread organisational well-being, motivate and improve satisfaction with ones role in the company makes people less inclined to look for a new job. Whether it’s learning a foreign language or managing ones time better in the company, courses can be expensive or difficult to schedule. Why not make them part of your working hours?
There are many strategies, but they are always based on the same principle: listening.
