Randy Emelo
A recent study published in The Harvard Business Review estimates that the average young, talented worker only stays at the same job for 28 months before moving on to another company. The same report stated that nearly three-quarters of a company’s young high-achieving employees are actively looking for other opportunities outside of their company, and are interviewing with another company at least once a year. On top of this, 95% admitted to regularly looking for other potential employers and employment opportunities.
Why are so many high-quality young employees constantly looking for other opportunities? Why aren’t they staying with companies longer? Why is future leadership leaving in droves?
“They weren’t getting the personal attention, the mentoring, the coaching, the training they wanted,” said Beth N. Carver, a consultant who has spent the last 12 years studying exit interviews, in an article from BusinessInsider. It all comes down to learning or the lack thereof. Beth Carver continues in the article to explain that two of the biggest reasons young professionals say they decide to leave their current organization are a lack of available mentoring and training opportunities. Consequently, these talented young people aren’t learning enough in their jobs, so they look elsewhere for opportunities that will push them and help them expand their personal skill set.
"Two of the biggest reasons young professionals say they decide to leave their current organization are a lack of available mentoring and training opportunities."
By examining why this trend occurs, it’s clear that most companies are failing to recognize and leverage this young generations’ strength— their desire and expectation for continual learning opportunities in the workplace. What this study’s statistics should indicate is that to hire and retain these young employees, you need to create an interconnected and learning-friendly environment that fosters professional growth. Enter Trend Five in Sodexo’s 2013 Workplace Trends Report, 21st Century Mentoring, which explores the various styles of modern mentoring.
River can help you to create an environment that encourages the sharing of intellectual capital on an enterprise-wide level, thereby allowing young employees to connect, challenge and learn from one another.
Our program puts the opportunity for learning into the hands of the individual, allowing them to drive their own learning activities. This empowers and allows employees to learn about or advise on competencies of their choosing, while still benefiting the organization since the competencies all come from a list that is pre-approved by the organization.
Using River to create a learning-centered workplace can feed the hunger of young employees for more mentoring and learning opportunities, and can ultimately help cut down on this demographics’ turnover as a result. These people want a vehicle for open knowledge sharing and learning where they can make real connections with people in the company and can have a deep impact on their jobs and careers. If you asked around, I’m willing to bet that all of your employees would want such an open learning environment, not just your young talent. Imagine the impact this could have on your whole employee population. Now the only question to ask is: What are you waiting for?
Randy Emelo is President/CEO at Triple Creek Associates, an enterprise knowledge sharing software company.
