According to a 2018 survey by Deloitte – 43% of Millennials plan to quit their current job within two years. While factors like good pay and the famous ‘great company culture’ may initially appeal, having a drink in the office at 4 o’clock on a Friday isn’t going to make up for employees becoming disengaged and demotivated.
The problem with retaining Millennial employees – a problem that will only worsen with each generation – isn’t to do with laziness, selfishness and certainly not entitlement. The problem starts, not after a year or two, but before they’d even stepped foot in the door – it starts with the recruitment process.
Einstein famously defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results – yet that’s exactly what businesses seem to be doing when it comes to retention.
A good company culture is obviously important, the likes of Google and Hubspot are infamous for it. But, offering staff a free gym membership and an extra day’s holiday, isn’t going to suddenly make a demotivated employee the right fit for the job role, because that’s where a huge part of the issue lies, being the right fit.
You could be an incredible writer, have an outstanding portfolio and absolutely smash the interview. Breeze through an Assessment Centre where you have 20 minutes to produce an email for a marketing campaign. It’s a job in fashion and you love fashion, it’s a copywriting job and you love writing, this is surely going to be a dream job? The perfect fit!
Maybe. But when you’re on your third blog of the day and your boss hasn’t liked any of them, do you have the resilience to keep going? When you’ve got four different things to do by the end of the day and it’s 3 o’clock, can you prioritise? Or do you have the ability to bounce back if you miss a deadline?
Hiring the best fit isn’t always about hiring the most talented writer, the best analyst or the most experienced manager. It might be that the third most talented writer thrives in pressured situations or the manager who has two years less experience can prioritise and organise like there’s no tomorrow.
All of these factors are measurable, as strengths. They can all be assessed and analysed, alongside a candidate’s skill level, to find out who the best candidate is for the specific job role.
If your recruitment process doesn’t incorporate an individual’s strengths as well as their skills, then you’ll run the risk of it being a short-sighted appointment. Millennials aren’t leaving because they feel entitled to more benefits and less working hours – they’re leaving because they were never the right fit in the first place.
It’s still important to offer incentives and benefits to keep employees motivated, the retention issue doesn’t just end when the recruitment process ends, but it’s certainly where it starts.
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