As a culture we spend so much time talking about why people quit their jobs. There are countless articles on hundreds of platforms looking at retention from this negative perspective.
But, we think there has to be another way.
If you’re struggling with retention, you may be asking the wrong questions.
Last week, we were chatting to a client who expressed concern about how many of his entry-level staff were leaving within a few years. I asked if he had any gut feelings as to why they were leaving, and he gave a lot of the same answers we hear from most of our clients.
There was no clear career path, they got better offers elsewhere, etc.
Then I asked him if he knew what made people stay.
He didn’t, because they’d never seen it that way – which is totally fair! As leaders, we often focus on the problems that need fixed instead of the things that need celebrating.
The issue is that a lot of your retention questions might be answered by figuring out why long term employees have committed. It can be too easy to focus on why people are leaving. But people do stay in their jobs for lots of reasons. If you don’t know those reasons, either personal or cultural, you’re missing a huge part of the retention puzzle.
If you start by asking your long-term employees why people stay in their jobs, you can start to gather data on what’s working in your organization, not just what isn’t working.
And if you have no idea how to go about figuring that out, get in touch with us and we’ll help.
Learn more about how we can help your organization with key retention issues here: https://abbey-research.com/corporate-trainings/
