The key issues around why people stay in a business are the same as those that CEOs and Boards need to focus on to attract top people.
There is no denying that many CEOs and Boards are struggling with today's new employment landscape. New technology, changing demographics and social behaviours have forced businesses to reconsider their approach to talent attraction and retention.
According to our research, the top three drivers behind executives changing their jobs or career are:
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Leadership
A big issue that impacts on the decision of whether your top senior people stay, is the calibre of leadership. The level of leadership that a business displays, and the opportunities for senior and executive staff to be kept engaged and challenged is crucial to retaining your best people.
Research shows that one of the top reasons why people leave an employer is due to poor management, or if you are sitting at the executive level, poor leadership.
Unfortunately, many organisations fail to address the issues of poor management or leadership, as it is one of the most challenging areas to address. Those organisations that do it well are those that have regular 360 degree feedback, reviews, and management training and development. In these situations taking action is better than inaction, even though inaction tends to be the more common and damaging approach.
For high performers it is hard to achieve great things without great leadership and a team of staff that are switched on, motivated and engaged. Businesses that have a great leadership development model where employees are continually being measured, rewarded and challenged are those that are more inclined to be retaining the best for longer.
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Career progression
Opportunities for mentoring, moving into new roles across divisions, moving up, business coaching, overseas secondments all help to keep staff engaged. It is unreasonable to hire a talented executive and expect them to hang around if their own personal development needs are not being met.
This group is by nature very focussed on being challenged. They also want to work for an organisation and leader who invests in their development, just as they invest their time and energy into seeing the organisation succeed. Providing your executives with a growing workload, however, does not provide them with real challenges that deliver a sense of achievement for them to stay with the organisation.
As a retention strategy, more organisations are now seeing the value in engaging career coaches or business coaches to work with their executives to both assist them in gaining value out of their current role and/or planning their next career moves; be that with the company or external to the company.
Succession planning is another area that businesses are increasingly seeing the value in implementing as a retention strategy, that also forms part of the overall business plan and strategy.
As a part of our research into understanding this market segment of high salary earners, 75% said they would take a salary cut to be able to do a job they are capable of doing that is different to what they have done in their past working career. Career progression does not necessarily have to be up; it can be lateral and is about providing your executives with stimulating work opportunities.
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Salary
Salary is of course another decision that comes into play when a senior staff member or executive is looking to move on; however, it is the third on the list. Recent reports show salary is a key trigger when it came to seeking new employment. The top three drivers are:
- Salary
- Career development
- Work-life balance
So whilst salary is the primary driver across the general marketplace this does not ring true at the senior and executive level. If CEOs and Boards are aware of the decision-making rationale for staying, and knowing that at the top level salary plays only a small part, then the opportunity to retain staff becomes a far easier proposition.
Businesses are only just starting to realise that different market segments require a different approach. By and large businesses have traditionally been great at dealing with this for graduate recruitment, however this has not extended to other market segments of job seekers.
This is something new we are starting to see be acknowledged and addressed by CEOs and Boards, and no doubt over time businesses will start to see the benefits of this more targeted approach, from a higher calibre workforce to a smaller recruitment budget.