Move Over Great Resignation, Now Entering “The Great Misalignment of Talent”.

To be clear — the great resignation is going nowhere. According to recently released U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data, on the last business day of June 2022, total separations had edged up to 5.9 million — 4.2 million of those were voluntary separations/quits, and layoffs/discharges accounted for about 1.3 million. While the numbers indicate that we will continue to see mass turnover, it’s important to reframe the narrative to truly understand the leading drivers behind it.

An unexpected benefit to come out of COVID-19 is the accessibility it provided to continued learning and development. Organizations had to adapt to a new virtual posture, and in that, otherwise in-person (and costly) conferences and webinars were often free to access. Additionally, as a result of COVID-19 restrictions, there has been a noticeable uptick in enrollment in massive open online courses post-March 2020. While observing COVID-19 restrictions, workers globally have been at home upskilling over the past two years.

But what does this mean for your workforce and, more importantly, retention?

The pandemic has caused workers to reassess their life at work. It’s shifted to a mindset of, “Am I getting what I need out of my employer?”, and some have down-shifted career on their list of what defines them/is of most importance to them. And while organizations globally are navigating how to enhance their value proposition and address the needs of their employees through benefits such as flexible work arrangements and the ability to do more meaningful work, upskilling is an area I believe deserves attention.

Research commissioned by PwC indicates that 40% of workers successfully improved their digital skills during the pandemic and 77% are ready to learn new skills or completely retrain.

Again, you might ask — what does that mean for retaining my employees?

While upskilling is critical in ensuring your employees are continuously developing and are honing skills that contribute to your organization’s competitive advantage, does your organization have a workforce planning strategy in place to fully utilize the new skills being developed? In other words, as your employees develop these new skills, are there opportunities in place for them to actually use them?

If 40% of workers have successfully upskilled and 77% are ready to learn new skills or completely retrain, and there is no workforce strategy in place to adapt their roles to fully utilize their new skills, it leads to a point of frustration — misalignment of talent.

So, how do you get ahead of this?

1. Listen. Surveys are an excellent way of understanding how you can meet the needs of your employees. More importantly, the surveys should be designed with intention. Gone are the days of sending out surveys to confirm you’ve hit an arbitrary % of employee satisfaction. This generation is much more demanding of employers, and it’s critical to not only have a two-way street of communicating needs but also taking action.
2. Understand what motivates your employees (especially the ones you want to retain). Once armed with survey insights on the needs of your workforce, develop an action plan to truly understand their motivators. Recognition is great and compensation is important (hello student loans), but at the heart of it, I’m driven by loving my work and can become demotivated if there’s an imbalance between doing work I love and feel challenged by, and doing the mundane work that has to get done. An organization looking to retain me would know that I am at my happiest and most productive self in a role where I am able to do mostly XYZ. There is power in understanding what motivates your high performers.
3. Develop a rotational or work-sharing program. The pros of developing these programs far outweigh any potential cons. Developing these programs allows you to diversify the skills within your organization and fully leverage the new skills your employees have gained by allowing them to use those skills on other teams. Also, by allowing upskilled staff to do cross-training with other employees, you can better mitigate a single point of failure scenario where critical skills walk out of the door with no suitable replacement with similar skills to step into the newly vacated role. It is important to note that participation in these programs should be retaliatory-free. An employee showing interest in working on another team shouldn’t be seen as an insult or betrayal, but as a way of aligning someone to a role where they will be most productive, and more importantly, retain them within the organization (win:win). It takes courage to speak up — be supportive.
4. Develop a “skills and areas of interest” bank. An internal repository that tracks new skills and development areas is a way of ensuring that skills are being leveraged enterprise-wide. While an employee’s new analytical skill may not be something you can utilize immediately, another team within the organization could benefit greatly from it. Finding the balance between operational needs and employee satisfaction is a challenge, which is why it is important to develop intentional workforce strategies. Say “no” to siloing and under-nurturing skills.
5. Remain agile. Employee tenure has dropped over the past decades, particularly as the makeup of the workforce changes — in 2020, the median tenure of workers ages 55 to 64 (9.9 years) was more than three times that of workers ages 25 to 34 years (2.8 years). Now with Millennials and Gen-Z making up 46% of the workforce, it’s important to fully understand and meet their wellbeing needs, or the talent door of your organization will continue to revolve. Employees are demanding more and pushing back on a one-size fits all approach. Take proactive measures to stop talent from leaving your organization.

Gallup

The opinions expressed are my own, not those of my employer or Firm.