Debunking the talent retention myth

This article appeared on www.skillsportal.co.za on Thursday, 26 May 2011

South African companies should no longer assume that career path planning, brand loyalty and rewards for high-flyers will retain their valued employees. Instead, they need to recognise that financial rewards and organisational attachment are not a catch-all for retention and that employees in the new world of work have developed an open, flexible attitude to their relationship with employers.

That’s the critical learning to emerge from second National Employee Engagement Survey, which will be presented on Thursday, 09 June 2011 in Johannesburg by its authors, Ruwayne Kock and Dr Kent McNamara.

A registered industrial psychologist, Kock is a shareholder at The Human Resource Practice where he is the head of the consulting service line. His associate there, Dr McNamara is an industrial anthropologist.

According to the pair, their research has debunked several key myths surrounding the retention of employees in South African organisations. For example, in addition to the diminished appeal of the ‘traditional rewards’ (financial, career and leisure incentives), the research found that corporate organisations should place less emphasis on the indefinite retention of employees, and more emphasis on ensuring that while people are in their employ, they are provided with the resources to enable them to perform to a high level and deliver quality results.

This shift of focus involves two strategic steps, namely, moving away from monitoring the ‘exit’ process to placing more emphasis on the ‘arrival’ process, by attracting, screening and on-boarding candidates with the appropriate personal engagement attributes and potential for performance; and creating the environmental conditions for rapidly enhancing employee engagement and performance.

“Our first national survey of engagement, conducted in 2009, showed a phenomenal 64% of South African employees were looking for new horizons within and outside their companies,” said Kock. “It therefore suggested that one way of improving the bottom line without decreasing overheads and expenses was to strengthen employees’ sense of engagement1 to their jobs and their organisations, and as a result, improve their performance.

“The second South African National Employee Engagement Survey examined the relationship between intent to stay, or leave, with those factors that are historically associated with boosting engagement levels, such as career progression, job satisfaction and financial rewards.

“A sample of 406 respondents was electronically surveyed across all nine provinces and across most industry sectors, job levels, population groups and disciplines. The 2010 survey found that respondents’ personal effort that is, the decision to work hard or put in extra effort, is related to their personal identification with their jobs or occupations.

“This finding points to the importance of the content and challenge of the job which can improve organisational identification or association. The study also found that the high risk retention categories were people under 30, with degrees, with 4-10 years experience, managers, African and Indian respondents, people in administration, human resources, utilities and government,” said Kock.

The following retention myths in the management of talent in local organisations were challenged by the survey:

1. Satisfaction with career progress is not a reliable indicator of intent to stay or leave. It is clear that many employees will fulfil career aspirations in different organisations.

2. Professional people in South Africa operate in a ‘new world of work’, characterised by more open and flexible relationships with organisations, where company loyalty and lifelong affiliation is less important than previously.

3. Satisfaction with financial rewards does not always predict intent to stay and does not offer a ‘catch-all’ strategy for retention. Although many younger people were unhappy with pay and thought of quitting, this was not true for other employees.

4. Supervisors’ are not the ‘front line’ of engagement; instead, the supervisors’ own personal sense of engagement was found to be consistently low across different sectors and must be raised if they are to play a greater role in engaging their subordinates.

5. The Human Resources discipline should be the champion of employee engagement, yet the HR practitioners who took part in the survey revealed a low level of personal engagement, which poses a challenge for any talent retention strategy

Dr McNamara summarised: “Given these findings, the managers of tomorrow need to provide conditions to enhance employee engagement. They need to be self aware; conduct critical performance conversations; conduct realistic career dialogues and coach subordinates to optimal performance.

“Employees of tomorrow will need to be resourceful, demonstrate a positive attitude, be inspired, manage their jobs efficiently and be a team player, if they are to perform under the current economic conditions. This requires a transformation of the employee value proposition to include challenging and meaningful work that will enhance organisational commitment and in turn, retention,” he said.