Employee Retention – the wrong metric?

Anyone that manages highly technical resources has gone through the experience of losing a key team member. It’s painful to lose good people and only natural to think in terms of retention strategies. I get it, I just lost a key team member last week and although I’m happy for her, we are faced with the need to fill (I was going to say large shoes, but that’s not a compliment for most women!) a big hole in our organization.

I went to a retention seminar at #CiscoLive this year and got to hear talent consultant talk about how retention may be the wrong metric. His made the point that career portability is the new job security. We, as an industry, have a severe shortage of highly skilled technical resources and with all of the social media-enabled toolsets at our fingertips - portability has never been easier. He then suggested that IT leaders need to think more like college basketball coaches than bankers.

A college basketball coach will recruit a high school ‘rockstar’, knowing upfront that at best he will only have the guy for 4 years. If you are Mike Krzyzewski, you may only have them for 1-2 years. They view their job as maximizing their team each season and making each player better for the experience. A banker thinks in terms of retaining and growing assets.

I’m neither a banker nor a basketball coach (unless you count my 1 season as an assistant coach for 4-6-year-old girls in a church league …’ no, everybody run that way!’), but I think he had a great point. None of us are guaranteed tomorrow much less %100 employee retention. As a matter of fact, we need a certain amount of churn if for no other reason than to make sure we’re actually earning our paycheck as a manager. Our corporate responsibility is to create healthy and sustainable teams that can survive and thrive without key members, including ourselves.

So – how do we maximize our team effectiveness ‘each season’ and ‘make each player better for the experience’? Here are a few ideas:

·     Be super clear and intentional on your team identity and mission – people want to feel like what they do matters, and it is your job to make sure they make the connection between what they do and their impact on the overall mission.

·     Be healthy – familiarize yourself and your team with the ‘5 dysfunctions’ and work diligently to eliminate them

·     Be intentional about personal growth and professional development – As a manager, you need to take their growth and development seriously. Don’t intentionally or unintentionally keep them away from what is best for their career.

·     Be generous – Fight for appropriate raises and promotions proactively. There aren’t many things that say ‘I care about your career’ better than being the first mover in a raise/promotion discussion.

What am I missing? How do you all view retention?