Employees don’t leave companies, they leave managers. Or do they?
Recent research has shown that 64 percent of young workers find job-hopping an acceptable and beneficial practice even when they have good managers. Another study also reveals that millennials resign nearly twice as often as their older counterparts.
What does this mean for employers?
As expected, this job-hopping trend is detrimental to (and expensive for) companies. Hiring and onboarding new hires takes time and resources. Worse, it’s not always guaranteed that they’ll turn out to be the right ones for the position.
Fortunately, there’s a less frustrating approach to decrease employee turnover. Even better, it can actually be mutually beneficial too.
Introducing the Career Transition Program
Employee resignation is inevitable. As more remote work opportunities emerge, the number of job hoppers is likely to increase.
Hence, rather than treating it as taboo, experts are advising employers to embrace it through a career transition program.
In case you’re unfamiliar with the term, a career transition program dispenses with the traditional two weeks’ notice. Instead, it allows employees to begin searching for a new job while still working at their old one. Simply put, resigning employees aren’t asked to leave right away.
This new approach is particularly beneficial with client-facing employees. For instance, running a high-end real estate company requires highly skilled, professional agents. Hence, losing them abruptly can affect client retention.
Clients hate frequent account manager turnovers, in general. It’s a hassle for them to have to build rapport with a new person. Even worse, it creates an opportunity for your clients to follow their trusted account managers to whichever company they transfer to. Yikes.
Launching the Program in Your Organisation
If you find yourself ready to do away with the traditional two weeks’ notice, here are three things to help you implement the career transition program more smoothly:
Establish It During Onboarding
Discuss this exit option with new hires as early as their onboarding days. This seemingly paradoxical approach might sound ridiculous at first, but the reason is simple.
Transition programs make your new employees feel that you have a safe and productive exit strategy in place in case the job doesn’t work out for both of you. It also helps build trust between both parties, and that’s always a good start to any working relationship.
Engage in Mindful Conversations Regularly
When an employee is unhappy, it will reflect on his/her performance. One way to monitor this is through regular conversations.
Make it a habit to ask your staff these three important questions: Are you happy? Are you present? Are you engaged?
Knowing the answers to these will help you identify issues before they come to head so you can address them early on. Don’t wait for your employees to report that they’re unhappy because chances are, they’ve already made up their minds to leave by that point.
Train Managers to Give Feedback
Millennial and Gen Z employees crave purpose and job satisfaction. One way to fulfill this is through feedback.
A survey found out that an overwhelming 72 percent of millennial respondents feel happy and fulfilled when they receive accurate and consistent feedback from their managers. Conversely, this number significantly drops to 38 percent in the absence of such.
Interestingly, regular (and fair) feedback lays the foundation for employees to feel safe telling their managers that they’re looking to make a career or job change.
And when you have a transition program in place, you’ll have more chances to address these concerns before it reaches the point of no return.
Having trouble holding onto your skilled remote workers? We got you!
Remote Staff has been assisting Australian SMEs and entrepreneurs in finding and hiring skilled remote workers from the Philippines since 2007. We also help with onboarding and provide support throughout your working relationship, so we can help smooth over ruffled feathers and help prevent the loss of key staff.
Call us today or schedule a call back and let’s get started.
