It would be something of a challenge not to have either noticed or be hugely impressed by the force of sentiment behind last week’s International Women’s Day. The amount of passion, sincerity and momentum felt permanent and game changing. And whilst the personal stories were both inspiring and touching, the work done by a number of corporates, to demonstrate commitment to the day and the cause, was fascinating in terms of execution and reception.
BrewDog, for example, launched a pink ‘beer for girls’ to raise awareness around gender pay inequality with a commitment to sell the product in bars to those who identify as women at a fifth cheaper than the price for men. The initiative did not land with universal success, with a lot of commentators feeling the move was clumsy, over-engineered and patronising.
Interestingly, one of the more successful pieces of IWD marketing last week was the work of McDonalds. Perhaps not a brand immediately associated with gender equality, the fast food giant reversed the golden arches M logo to create a golden W for women. It was simple and hard to misinterpret – probably the issue BrewDog came up against – and generally played well. (With the exception of those taking issue with the retailer’s perceived low pay).
In terms of pay equality, promotional prospects and the overall working environment, there feels increasingly little place to hide for those organisations, managers and cultures that are not working towards an entirely level gender playing field.
And the working environment, for men and women, is my area of focus this time around. Whilst talent acquisition is the inspiration for many of these thought pieces, much evidence is emerging right now to suggest that employee retention is of equal if not more importance than candidate attraction in early 2018.
Let’s take the UK labour market. The ONS in February suggested that 3% of UK employees moved jobs in the final quarter of 2017. If that figure feels instinctively low, it is the highest recorded since the final quarter of 2007, when a very frothy and exuberant employment market collapsed in the face of a global recession.
People are, therefore, more confident about moving jobs than at any point in the last decade.
The picture feels even more marked in the US. ADP recently announced that 5% of US employees change jobs every month – so, by the time we reach December, half of all workers in the US will be working for a different employer.
A very telling piece of research from London First/Lloyds Banking Group from last month indicates that since the Brexit referendum, 40% of UK businesses have experienced a higher labour turnover (with just 20% suggesting this has reduced), and the picture in London is even more noticeable, with 52% of businesses experiencing an upturn in leavers.
Clearly, some organisations are working harder on their engagement and retention initiatives than others.
A lovely story emerged last week which touches on how Sainsbury’s view their employee base. The son, Doron Salomon, of a lady employed as an instore picker went onto Twitter to praise the way the retailer has, over several years, handled his mother’s decline into dementia. A year after she began work for Sainsburys, she told them about her dementia diagnosis, fully expecting to be let go at that point. Far from it, despite her mental deterioration meaning that her job had to be explained to her every day she arrived. Sainsbury’s created and adapted roles just for her and showed care and compassion for a number of years, inspiring pride and purpose in his mother.
(A story contrasting significantly with news this week that Tesco was offering a handsome £1.52 voucher to those employees who had battled in through the recent snow).
Quite rightly, the story was high profile last week and we can only hope that Sainsbury’s retention initiatives have benefited.
Equally interesting was another high profile story, this time touching on how to disengage employees. A remarkable football match took place last week between current Premier League champions, Chelsea, and champions elect, Manchester City (renamed Womanchester City last week). Faced with an exceptional opposition who have been playing at a level perhaps never seen in English football, Chelsea responded by demonstrating a complete absence of ambition, making no attempt to win the match, but preferring to get as many people between the ball and their goal. Damage limitation and nothing else. Losing just 1-0, Chelsea’s play that day was greeted by accusations that they were ‘anti football’ and a ‘crime against the game’.
More important, their craven lack of ambition angered their star player, Eden Hazard, making it more likely that he will depart at the end of the season for Real Madrid, increasingly frustrated by his role and the environment he now finds himself in.
And whilst the immediate managers of both Hazard and Mrs Salomon are clearly hugely influential in the tenure of their employees, do we measure retention levels to the same degree as talent acquisition? Who is responsible for the employee experience? Which organisations measure voluntary turnover and respond actively to such metrics? Who gets targeted around this? Drucker’s ‘if it’s not measured, it’s not managed’ applies clearly here. Whilst the value proposition that attracts people into an organisation should be visible and instrumental in them staying and thriving, how many employers genuinely give this consideration?
It’s telling that most organisations have any number of metrics which analyse attraction costs – cost per hire, time to hire, etc – but even today, the most obvious statistic around employee turnover – how much does it cost to replace a leaver – has any number of different answers, so reducing its impact and importance.
Nevertheless, it does feel as though there is traction around this subject.
An interesting study from the US into senior marketers asked the question as to the most important factor for future organic growth last month. Popular answers included ‘Having the right operating model’ and ‘Having the right technology’. However, the option attracting comfortably the most responses – with 35.3% of the total survey, was ‘Having the right talent’ – not hiring the right talent but having the right talent.
And this was echoed in a major piece of research from Randstad and their 2018 Talent Trends paper. Surveying 800 global C-suite and human capital leaders, they found that 51% of organisations are increasing their investment in improving the workplace experience and another 31% are maintaining those budgets.
Those organisations that are close to their employee base, that spend time listening to their people, understanding both why they leave and why they stay are likely to put themselves at a distinct advantage.
Employers looking at headline news around redundancies effecting the likes of New Look, Carillion, John Lewis and Airbus, should not mask the fact that this remains a strong employee-led labour market and should not, equally, be used as a reason not to drive a better employment experience – for men and women alike.
On the one hand, recruitment and retention should rarely be seen as separate entities. Great engagement and retention activities lead to positive employer brand advocacy, so facilitating attraction initiatives.
However, for many organisations, it feels as though throwing additional time, effort and focus into recruiting might be an easier, less controversial option than understanding, confronting and changing what is potentially producing a poor employee experience and fixing that.
More of your people will be seeking a move away from your organisation than at any time in the last decade. Applying appropriate metrics, listening to your people, understanding some of the key causes of these departures and working with internal talent pools to address them isn’t the easy option.
Right now, it feels like the option more and more employers are finding it increasingly difficult to avoid.
Getting to the heart of your employee mindset 