Have a Seat, Stay Awhile: The New Battle for Retaining Top Global Talent

A recent study by Philadelphia-based talent training consultancy Manpower confirms a burning question in business today:  After companies find and hire top employee talent, how will they keep them?  Once upon a golden era, young men and women in this country found the best job available to them, and stayed put.  This is no longer the case.  According to the Economist, American employees remain at a job only four years, on average.  British workers, meanwhile, stay more than 10 years.  And if you live in Greece, you are likely to view at least three Summer Olympics in the same company cafeteria before taking up with your next employer.

So, what about the employer/employee model has changed over the years to cause this shift and, more importantly, what is industry doing about it?

A plethora of theories persist as to why workers come and go so quickly, among the more popular are globalization—many countries are now in the hunt for top talent—and a reversal of the fundamental balance between work/life satisfaction that has more people pursuing personal passions than ever before.  Undoubtedly there is truth in both theses.  Thanks to the Information Age, workers are finding new and possibly better opportunities in companies on continents they might not have considered previously, and the allure of careers that promote social responsibility is at an all-time high.

Undeterred, businesses are finding new ways of keeping top employee talent longer.  Industry data indicates that employees respond best to company incentives that include the ability to grow within an organization, workplace flexibility, and a corporate culture that breeds camaraderie.  For an increasing number of businesses, the backbone of these initiatives is talent management software that enables companies to align goals and objectives with tools for ensuring smarter and more effective employee compensation, performance management and development decisions.

Talent management systems that drive employee retention have in fact become so ingrained in business today that a record number of HR executives and professionals from more than a dozen countries attended the 10th Anniversary HR Technology Conference & Exposition in October.  Workstream was of course on-hand to lead the charge.

In any case, the focus of the talent management battle clearly has shifted from the fight to lure top talent to the war to keep it—or, as Fortune termed it, “the new battle for global economic supremacy.”