talent retention

team building

newsletter

During our team building work with client organizations, we've compiled a collection of barriers that we see creating enormous stress for individuals, blocking performance in teams, and robbing organizations of productivity.  Each issue, one of these barriers will be addressed in our newsletter.  We'll include some suggestions for breakthrough thinking to give you ideas for how you might begin busting through these barriers.

Free Team Building Newsletter

Barrier #9:        The New Physics of the Workplace

Breakthrough #9:    The worker entering the workforce today can expect to have ten employers over a 40-year career.

The landscape is suddenly very different.

The ground is shifting beneath you.

It wasn’t so long ago that workers could expect to remain with the company until they retired. 

T hose days are all but gone. 

Executive placement experts regularly tell recruits that organizations are happy to get three productive years out of an executive.  The average knowledge worker stays on the job for only three years!  Downsizing is an everyday reality as organizations merge or try to squeeze full value from every dollar at the behest of shareholders and stakeholders.   

Everything has accelerated.  The massive downsizing and chopping at mid-level management means fewer protégés are groomed for the senior ranks.  It also contributes to a near-stampede to the door by capable older workers who have decided to jump rather than be pushed. 

Many of those who remain have a dim view of the thinning population of their colleagues, swearing to “get even” with or sabotage the organization. Meanwhile, borders are becoming ever more transparent as the brain-drain sees North American and European workers switching, not only between companies, but between countries, too. 

It’s a truism to say we’ve entered an age in which our main commodity is knowledge.  But that is the fact.  And now, when we need knowledgeable workers most, they appear to be either in short supply or difficult to protect against high-paying, attractive recruitment offers.  

If you lose a skilled knowledge worker, it hurts. It can cost as much as 100% of a year’s salary to replace each competent employee.  It’s even worse if you have a small business and each of your employees wears a number of hats.  You can easily envision the problem of replacing these people. 

   Remember:       Retention and development of the staff you now have are absolutely critical to your organization's survival and growth.

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