New Hire Retention and ROI

The labour market is definitely a challenge at the moment when it comes to recruiting and retaining quality candidates. I feel that more than ever, we as hiring managers and companies are being interviewed by our candidates just as much as we are interviewing them!

Historically, the narrative has always been to look for people that want to grow their careers and in many cases, retire with the same company. However, these days while reviewing resumes, I notice that 2 years seems to be the max (+/-) time that people are staying with one organization (this data has been trending for a while). While some may chalk this up to a lack of loyalty, I think this is more to do with a younger generation emphasizing more value on "holistic quality of life" or "work-life balance". The Great Resignation (Katie Lynne)-video provides a really good explanation of the motives behind these trends.

Instead of trying to fight this trend of shorter tenure in positions, a better strategy may be to redefine what "success" looks like form a staffing perspective. Sure, we definitely want to do all we can to find and retain great people but maybe an equal success would also, be coaching and developing people to help them realize their greatest potential and while they may move on to other things, we now know that we have the tools to replicate the process.

Key to the success would be getting our desired ROI within the 2-2.5 years that we have them. This means shortening the time to "proficiency" from 2 years to <6 months (arbitrarily). Ultimately, we need to understand what drives the younger and very capable work force (Surprise! It does not appear to be about money and security anymore but the fulfillment that comes with Impactful work). And with that said, as the young people we have had a hand in coaching and developing move on, we (and our organizations) can benefit from their networks of more young and talented peers as our next batch of future leaders to coach.