How One Preventable Mistake Is Driving Your Employees Away

How One Preventable Mistake Is Driving Your Employees Away According to a recent survey from Saba and WorkplaceTrends.com, one third of U.S. workers are looking to change jobs in the next six months. A large chunk of these employees 41 percent said theyre itching to make a move because they want career development opportunities that their current employers just arent offering. People are looking to grow, expand, and use their skill sets, and the economy is pretty much booming right now, says Adrienne Whitten, vice president of product marketing at Saba. If people arent getting what they want, they know its relatively easy to get it elsewhere.These results dont represent a glitch in the economic numbers, according to Whitten. Saba conducted a similar survey earlier this year, and the results were pretty much the same. What were seeing is a consistent desire among workers to find new jobs.The plot thickens when we see that a large majority of companiesareoffering development opportunities to employees. The problem isnt that companies are failing to give employees what they want the real problem is that HR is failing to communicate with employees about the career developments options available to them. Saba found that 60 percent of HR leaders say they provide clear career paths to employees, but only 36 percent of employees said the same.Theres definitely a eu-agrarpolitik between what HR is doing and what employees are hearing and believing, Whitten says.HR Needs to Get Proactive and Make Career Development More AccessibleTo explain the communication breakdown, Whitten references a conversation she had with an HR professional at another companyI asked them, How do people know there are opportunities open for them? Whitten explains. And they said, We have an internal job board Employees just need to log on, search through it, and find something that fits.The problemwith this approach to employee development is twofold. First, it assumes that employees know where they should look to find development opportunities. Second and perhaps more damaging it overestimates the amount of free time and energy employees have. When are employees supposed to go digging through internal sites for development opportunities during lunch break? Are they supposed to stay after hours to spend their evenings hunting for jobs at their own companies?The dual failure to communicate development opportunities and make them more accessible to employees leaves the door open for recruiters to swoop in and snag a companys best talent.What HR folks dont realize is that the competitor will actively solicit the employees, Whitten says. They will call them, sell them, market to them heavily about everything they have to offer. Its not good to provide passive options that require the employee to go out and do it themselves.Turn Your HR Department Into Proactive StorytellersIf HR depart ments want to retain their employees, rather than drive them straight into the arms of competitors, they need to first work on their storytelling skills, Whitten says.For a while now, recruiters have been turning to marketers to help them improve their recruiting strategies. Theyve been learning how to better advertise lages, tell compelling stories, and engage meaningfully with target markets. Whitten suggests it may be time for HR to give marketing a call as well.The recruiting-marketing partnership has been a really good partnership for the companies that are doing that, Whitten says. For the sake of retaining internal employees not just attracting new ones it may be time for HR to partner with marketing to help them tell stories.But learning to be good storytellers isnt enough in and of itself. HR has to not only know how to tell stories about professional development, but also how to proactively market those stories to employees.Whitten explainsLets say Joe was able to move f rom a front-line position to management. Tell that story Advertise it Put together a video and push it out to employees. Its your job to get it in the face of employees. You have to do a push not wait for a pull.Theres one more thing HR departments should do, too Put themselves in the employees shoes to determine whether or not career development opportunities are truly accessible. Is it easy for employees to find opportunities and is it easy for them to apply for these opportunities?Sometimes, its just a matter of looking at the programs and saying, What can I do differently? Whitten says. Dont just assume everything you are doing is available to employees and that they are aware of it.