Keeping Employees Engaged

To: Human Resouce Professionals responsible for hiring & keeping new employee.

All of us involved in the human resource game know that the days of lifetime employment are long since over. Some argue that future employees will have as many as 10 employers in their careers. And perhaps that number is low. But should we just sit back and accept that thinking, or can we think of alternatives that will boost the tenure of our new employees from 3 to 5 years to 5 to 7 years and save on the very expensive and disruptive process of replacing employees.

Or, should it even matter? Perhaps the new business-normal is one of high turnover. That is, one in which employers expect employees to leave them after 2 or 3 years. Maybe we should even be planning for it in our strategic plans. But it doesn't seem natural, does it? Maybe it would feel better if the time period was 4 years, after all, we go to 4 years of high school and 4 years of college. But even that seems out of place, especially in high tech companiesl So how do we begin to address the problem of high turnover and low engagement?

Let's ask, why do employees stay with companies? For a long time scholars held that there are two primary reasons why an employee continues with the same organization. One, job satisfaction. If an employee is satisfied with his or her job, his or her work group etc. he or she will stay engaged with the organization. Secondly, if the employee is committed to the organization, the work group, or the work itself, she or he will more than likely stay engaged.

We can all understand job satisfaction when we experience it. What about organizational commitment? What is it? Scholars have debated this for a long time. For some time Meyer, Allen & Smith (1993) and Meyer, & Allen (1997) hold that there are three types of organizational commitment. First, there is affective commitment, second, continuance commitment, and finally normative commitment. An affectively committed employee is committed because he wants to be an employee of that organization (they are emotionally committed to their employer because they feel their values are similar), continuous commited employees are commited because they need to be (they have few alternatives), normatively committed employees are committed to their employer because they feel they ought to be (they believe they owe their commitment to the employer because of the opportunity they were given).

Is it possible that young graduates are not getting something out of the employment experiencce that causes them to leave? Is it possible that the parents of those young employees were viewed as not being treated well by their employers when they werre downsized, or right-sized and the like. Do you think that maybe those young graduates believe their parents gave their all to the organization, but were still dumped in the end and decided that they would not give their allegience to any company who can rationalise pulling someone out of their job without treating them justly? Or are these young people used to getting what they want and when they want it, and if they don't they pick up their marbles and go joing another game. May our focus should not be on why they leave but on why the stay. Perhaps if we can answe the question, "why do you stay with this employer so long", or "what keeps you here?" We might learn more of what we can do to keep the turnover rate higher.

There are scholars asking those questions and working on new explnations of why employees continue to stay engaged with their existing employer. I will have more to write about that in our next piece. In the meantime, I hope this blog gives hiring managers some food for thought. You have a difficult job and I expect it is about to get more difficult in the next few years.

Reference List:
Meyer, J.P., Allen, N.J., & Smith, C.A. (1993). Commitment to organizations and occupations: Extension and test of a three-component conceptualization. Journal of Applied Psychology 78(4), 538-551.

Meyer, J.P. & Allen, N.J. Commitment in the workplace: Theory research and application. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications

Glenn J. Forte, President
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