There’s been plenty of coverage on the so-called war for talent—referring to the competition among companies to find and retain the best employees—but very little about why that competition exists in the first place. The crux of the issue, I would argue, isn’t money or other tangible incentives, but rather an emotional one: providing employees with a sense of purpose in their work. The solution? Helping your staff derive more meaning from their roles than just helping the company make money.
The great resignation has nothing to do with a war for talent. The problem as actually a crisis of purpose. We need to help employees derive a deeper sense of purpose in the work they do if we want to retain the best talent. We are at risk of losing our most talented people because their sense of purpose may not be aligned with what we want them to achieve at work.
We all know that talent is scarce and hard to find, but what we tend to ignore is how difficult it can be to retain talented people once they’re in our midst. These are high-functioning professionals who could have gone anywhere else, and yet they chose your organization—and you let them walk out without doing anything about it. That’s not only bad business; it might be a matter of life or death.
The people who spend their days working in a cubicle, assembling widgets, may not feel as if they’re part of something great—but that’s rarely because of a war for talent. The great resignation has nothing to do with how much money we offer them or how high we set their status. There are two factors at play here: purpose and opportunity. Some people are looking for purpose when they look for work; others want opportunity. If you can provide both, you can keep your best employees. If you don’t, they’ll find another company that does.
Hiring managers don’t create purpose or meaning in their organization, but they can do their part to help foster them. Here are six ways hiring managers can make employees feel more purposeful: 1) Challenge people to find a deeper sense of meaning in what they do. 2) Hold your people accountable for finding greater purpose in their work. 3) Model purpose and meaning yourself. 4) Make it clear that you have faith in your team members and believe they will succeed if given an opportunity to prove themselves. 5) Get out of their way once you’ve hired them—it’s not about you anymore! 6) Don’t get discouraged if things don’t work out right away; sometimes it takes time for someone to find their place at a company and discover greater purpose there.
Find out how to build a great employee experience here.
See what HBR has to say about What’s Driving the Great Resignation here.