Reskilling and Upskilling of leaders

4 current strategies for retaining talent

Talent retention has become a major Achilles' heel for most companies to grow in the post-pandemic. As a new chapter in the waves of redundancies, quiet quitting is yet another sign that leaders need to update and adapt. Against this backdrop, we have identified the main difficulties in retaining talent and four current strategies for making the workplace a centre for attracting and retaining talent.

Upskill Insights Report for Leadership - 2023

Three factors cause much of the difficulty in attracting and retaining talent

A scenario of rapid change that demands a new level of adaptation, resilience and proactivity from leadership in order to make agile decisions with emotional intelligence and sustain company growth.

Remote and hybrid working models, which made it difficult to create meaningful connections, team cohesion and a sense of belonging.

A clash of generations, heightened by the pandemic, has brought to light the dissonance between leaders and their subordinates on aspects such as flexibility in the working model, a sense of purpose and a humanised culture.

How to upgrade your leadership and increase talent retention

Find out why your talents are leaving!

People today know their potential and are eager to have their personal, team and company problems resolved more quickly.

This new scenario generates an endless profusion of team problems that can no longer be solved in the traditional, reactive, palliative and often late manner. What's more, people want personalised solutions.

According to the McKinseyThe three main factors that employees cited as reasons for resigning were:

- They don't feel valued by their organisations (54%),
- They don't feel valued by their managers (52%),
- They don't experience a sense of belonging at work (51%). Employees who classified themselves as non-white or multiracial were more likely than their white colleagues to say they left because they didn't feel they belonged.

According to the same report, there is a disagreement between the reason why most employees are dissatisfied and resign and what the company believes causes them to leave.

The company believes that employees resign mainly because:

- Salaries are inadequate,
- They have health problems,
- They're looking for a new job,
- Opportunities are lacking,
- Lack of ability to work remotely,
- They are being sought by other companies.

And employees report deciding to leave because:

- They don't feel valued by their managers,
- They don't experience a sense of belonging in the company,
- They feel that their co-workers are neither welcoming nor trusting,
- They don't see any potential for progress,
- They have no flexibility in their diaries.

This discrepancy shows a lack of perception on the part of the leadership to see the root of problems.

Imagine if you and your leadership had the ability to spot problems when they are brewing?

This way you can be proactive in solving problems, preventing them from escalating and having to put out fires over and over again on a daily basis. And thus focus your time and energy on the company's performance and growth.

Solve the root problem of turnover instead of remedying the symptoms

The most common thing, and what most leaders tend to do, is to solve the symptoms of problems. This is because the symptoms are more visible and easier to solve. Thus, the leader who solves them demonstrates goodwill and efficiency.

However, often what lies behind a small problem or symptom is something much bigger, which has probably been overlooked from the start.

And because it was ignored, because the leader and/or the team didn't have the ability to see the problem or tackle it, what started out as something simple multiplied into countless side effects that could be affecting the whole business.

It's common to hear the following story from many executives and team leaders:

"We're having problems delivering projects [or products] on time, because in recent weeks we've lost talented people in our team. This is creating a huge workload in the current team and we're not managing to replace the people we've lost in time, or to prepare the new ones arriving at short notice."

Given this scenario, what are the most common conclusions on how to solve the problem of overload?

- we need to increase our employees' salaries;
- we need to hire faster;
- we need to have a bigger team, with more backups, to cover the eventual departure of key people in the process;
- we need to do an organisational climate survey;
- we need more benefits.

The employee, in turn, tends to compensate for the overload in some way. They may temporarily relieve their stress with junk food, alcohol, medication or some other habit that can become an addiction. Or the company can offer healthy benefits that play the role of compensation.

However, in either case, the overload continues to have harmful effects on the team's physical and mental health, making the main problem grow and get worse. It's like putting a bucket under a leak instead of solving it.

It's very likely that the root problem we've described above, which is quite common in today's companies, has its origins in leadership behaviour. It may be the result of the way leaders manage people, relationships and the working environment, whether or not they recognise the motivations of the team, whether or not they know what is important to each team member, and whether or not they are able to identify team problems when they are emerging.

In other words, the ideal would be to direct efforts towards solving what is most difficult and labour-intensive to solve: the root problem. Rather than trying to solve the symptoms, which in this case are overload and its effects on the team.

Detecting problems as they arise depends on greater proximity between leader and team member. Even when working remotely, you need to accompany your team members, not to micromanage them, but to find out what they want and need, and how to create the ideal conditions for them to express their full potential.

Adapt your leadership to the desires and needs of each leader

A misreading of the company's leadership can be a key cause of losing talented professionals. And with the distancing of remote working, this is happening more and more often.

A research McKinsey wanted to find out what is driving people to stay in their current job, resign or return. To do this, it detected 5 different types of professionals that are more common in the post-pandemic. In this scenario, flexibility at work is one of the items that has become more relevant to retaining talent.

However, flexibility means very different things for each professional. Therefore, a model that works for everyone is apparently not efficient.

 

  1. Traditionalists - career-orientated and concerned with work-life balance,
  2. Do-it-yourself - they value flexibility in the workplace, meaningful work and remuneration,
  3. Carers and others - motivated by remuneration, but also by flexibility in the workplace, health and well-being support and career development.
  4. Students and part-time professionals - this group emphasises flexibility, career development and advancement potential, meaningful work and a community of trustworthy and supportive people, with remuneration being the last item on the list,
  5. Early retirees - are comfortable with their income, but can return to traditional work in the right circumstances, with flexible contracts, especially looking for meaning.

Of all these types of professionals, traditionalists are the ones who prioritise flexibility at work the least. However, each of them interprets flexibility in different ways. How about having a chat with your managers and understanding what this flexibility means for each of them? 

Try to understand which of the points below are important to him and review and update them in regular conversations with those he leads:

 

  1. Work from home a few days a week.
  2. Continue to work remotely and occasionally go into the office for a one-off event.
  3. Being understood when you need to take time off to look after your family.
  4. Having one or more days off after a more demanding period of work.
  5. Being able to work from anywhere in the world, always.
  6. Define your own working hours.
  7. Being able to take breaks during working hours - remote or face-to-face.
  8. Have enough time for lunch and a short rest.
  9. Work fewer days without losing pay.
  10. Productivity is measured by deliveries and not by hours worked.
  11. Balancing life and work.
  12. More horizontal relations between different hierarchies.

Refresh old leadership to reduce the impact of silent dismissal

O quiet quitting (the silent dismissal) may seem like just another chapter in the great dismissal. However, this movement to "do the minimum at work", attributed mainly to millennials and Generation Z, indicates a new way for these young people to relate to professional life. Perhaps this is an indication that it is the leaders of the "work hard or go home" generation who need to adapt.

The COVID-19 pandemic has encouraged many people to re-evaluate what they want from work - and from life. According to research by Deloitte "Millennial & Gen Z Survey 2022", "representatives of millennials and generation Z feel deeply concerned about the state of the world and about their own future, mainly related to work, mental health and financial life."

For more than 20 years, most people in the world have been experiencing a work-life imbalance. However, with the deterioration of mental health at a global level, accelerated by the pandemic, the new generations no longer accept working overtime in the expectation of being valued and recognised.

These young people want quality of life, personal fulfilment and fulfilment of their purpose, more humanised and conscious work. These new generations are also looking for results and to make money, but not at any cost. 

That's why, and for all the reasons we've mentioned, leaders need to be trained so that they're ready:

 

  • to be resilient, adaptable and agile in the face of rapid change,
  • to increase their perception, visibility and proactivity in the face of problems as they are being born,
  • to be attentive to understanding the desires, values and needs of each team member, to harmonise, welcome and value this diversity of perspectives, generating meaningful connections,
  • to share their vision, purpose and principles, to build an action plan that makes people see meaning in their work and the company grow.

Want to upgrade your leadership?

Book a demo of our Talent Development as a Service Platform

Click here

References

1 – The great attraction or the great attraction - the voice is yours
2 – The Great Attrition is making hiring harder. Are you searching the right talent pools?
3 – Millennial & Gen Z Survey 2022 - Seeking balance and advocating change

en_GBEnglish (UK)
pt_BRPortuguês do Brasil pt_PTPortuguês es_ESEspañol en_GBEnglish (UK)