Employers are crying out for enthusiastic new recruits to help them in their business, yet I often hear HR managers and leaders complaining about their most recent hires. The complaints are simple enough:
“Why can’t these younger workers stay with a company for more than 6 months?”
“Young people today have no loyalty. They’re always looking for another job and as soon as they find it, they are gone.”
“Their work ethic is so poor. They don’t know what work is!”
“They have no commitment to their employer or to their work.”
What’s interesting to me is that these same managers don’t ever stop to consider their role in all of this. Work is not just about the tasks we do, it’s also about the organizational context within which that work is done. The challenge for managers today is to provide the right environment, the right organizational context to retain their employees.
Rather than trying to shove a square peg (employee) through a round hole (work culture), why not bring those two shapes into better alignment? If it helped you retain your current employees, wouldn’t the effort be worth it?
It takes both sides to make a happy workplace, so it’s worth paying attention to the engagement factors that will keep your employees on board for the long term. Managers must create an organizational culture that inspires rather than repels their staff.