Where’s Waldo – Your New Team Member May Be Right Under Your Nose!

The face of your candidate pool has likely changed a great deal in the last 5 years. We know that people are moving from one job to the next more quickly these days. But is that a problem? Yes, you spend time training only to have them leave in many cases, but at the same time you are able to hire "new blood," which brings other experience and ideas into your business.

What are the stats?

The facts and figures of employees in the workforce have also changed dramatically in the past 20 years.

• People now have an expected 100 year lifespan.
• Most people will work 60-70 years during that lifetime.
• Two income households has increased to impact more than half of Americans.
• 35% of Americans hold a 4 year college degree
• Average time spent in a job is 4.3 years for men and 3.8 years for women.
• Skills learned on the job will only last 5 years, and technical skills half of that.

Think career lattice - not career ladder

Employees and managers often think of growth and development as looking for the next promotion. But that isn’t always the way to grow, and often not what your employees are looking for. Not everyone is cut out for leadership, but everyone can learn new things and add value to your team. The idea of the career lattice is to help employees develop and pick up new skills, without necessarily giving them additional pay or titles. Employees today want to learn and grow, but they are often less concerned with promotion. They know themselves well enough to know they aren’t interested in management, but that doesn’t mean they want to sit at the desk and do the same work for 20 years.

Learning can take on many faces

Helping employees gain experiences that create a career lattice isn’t as complex as it sounds. Consider working with your top talent to create a path of self-directed training, which is putting the responsibility for training in the hands of the employee. We all learn differently and asking the employee for their idea of what would work best for them is the first place to start. Think of training as experiences, not just learning as you put together customized development plans that will address your future needs.

Accepting what we cannot change

Don’t judge the employee who wants to make a change in their career based only on length of employment. Dig deeper into why they made changes and what they learned from those experiences. What can you offer to pull that all together and provide a longer career option? What are your current employees thinking? Be sure to offer experiences that augment their daily work so they don’t have to leave your organization just to learn something new. Create avenues and opportunities for employee development that will allow them to stay with your team and grow personally. A win-win for employee and organization is an equation where two plus two will equal five!