Retention doesn’t mean what you think it means

Employee expectations are evolving in accordance with economic and social changes – and businesses are caught in between.

In a recent episode of The HR Leader Podcast, Dynamic Leadership Programs Australia chief executive Karlie Cremin explained why workers are staying in jobs for longer – and why employers shouldn’t get complacent when it comes to engagement and retention.

According to Cremin, lower job mobility isn’t necessarily a good thing for organisations, as employees often stay in jobs for reasons other than satisfaction or loyalty.

In this way, if employers aren’t building engagement, it can lead to actively disengaged – yet remaining – employees within an organisation.

When it comes to contemporary employee priorities, such as flexible working arrangements, remote working, and non-monetary provisions, Cremin said the COVID-19 pandemic seemingly expanded what was possible for work, while fraught economic conditions and changes in society also contributed to changing expectations that are only accelerating as the factors become more extreme.

Cremin also explained that organisations face scope creep when it comes to wellness support, especially addressing and discussing mental health, as the balancing act between privacy and having transparent, helpful conversations becomes more difficult to navigate.

At the same time, mental health support demands are higher than ever, with organisations needing to find ways to assist in a way that encourages engagement.

Aligning with recent coverage of the increase in non-monetary incentives that are promoted when salary increases aren’t possible and in response to evolving employee expectations, Cremin explained that contemporary benefits are more nuanced because of the current labour market and because the benefits are highly preference-driven.

To begin with, Cremin urged employers to meet employees in the middle to understand “what people are wanting out of work … [that] is where we are seeing higher engagement, higher productivity, and more successful organisation”.

Organisations, she said, should be upfront “about what they’re actually asking of people in terms of: is it a bloated workload? Is it an unachievable workload? Is it that we’ve put in system friction that’s making it really hard to do that job?”

From these questions, Cremin said businesses should be looking at the exchange, and how businesses can make retention worthwhile.

Reflecting on this perceived “new normal”, Cremin explained that many businesses still run on a model predicated on a traditional nine-to-five and within a physical office, both of which do not exist in the same way.

For HR, Cremin encouraged a focus on the business case of any decision or offering, and crafting communication through the reality of the moment.

In this way, “if you want to thrive, you need to look at your way of operating so that you can thrive with those expectations, or figure out a way to have no workforce … it’s not going to go back to how it used to be, whether or not we want that”.

Cremin said: “Organisations need to be structured with that in mind, just as other factors in our environment around inflation, pricing sensitivity and customer behaviour [are] now our workforce expectations. We need to build it into how we operate so that we actually have flexibility in how we work with people.”

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