When we talk about career development and talent retention let me state what I believe are some obvious assumptions:
- The training department cannot solely promote people in other departments.
- An outside agency or resource such as myself cannot solely promote people in other departments.
- The human resource department cannot promote people without the manager of the people being involved.
Okay, these were pretty simple and straightforward, but then why do we hear managers stating all the time they don't have time? A manager who is not engaged or scheduling time with his or her employees often is left wondering why top talent leave. These are the same people who need to spend time interviewing which is essentially the same time they could have been spending with prior employees!
What if a manager was evaluated on employee retention and promotions inside the company as an element of compensation and their own promotion? The manager to employee relationship is sacred, but what if we measured managers on three levels of coaching application:
- The number of promotions internally
- The number of people percentage wise retained inside and outside the department within the organization.
- The amount of dollars saved on recruiting cost
I am sure there are other metrics we could use but think of these three and the impact they have on the bottom line. It reminds me of a story years ago with one of my favorite managers a guy by the name of Tom. He was having a tough year as a sales leader and was really down on himself. I shared with him how can you be down on yourself when in fact you saved this company a ton of money. He said what are you talking about. I said you've promoted people outside of your department for the betterment of this company throughout this whole year; therefore, you cannot solely be measured by revenue! He was a great and is a great sales manager till this day but one of the best coaches I've ever seen in my life.
If you'd like to ascertain specific elements that could be affecting your employees willingness to stay at your organization check out our latest assessment tool: click here
