Here in the United States, job retention has been an issue for quite some time now. Even back in the year of 2015, it was problematic. After all, the end of the June of that year alone saw more than two and a half million people leaving their jobs – and on a voluntary basis, for that matter. From just two years preceding it, this showed an increase in such activity by a full one quarter – certainly a considerable amount by any standards, to say the very least.
Such patterns are particularly prominent among the younger generation of workers, the millennial generation. It has become so prominent, in fact, that millennials are now referred to as the “job hopping generation.” And this moniker is not a wholly unearned one, as millennials are more likely than any other group to leave their current positions on a moment’s notice, with up to 60% of all surveyed millennial employees stating that they would be likely to take a new job at the expense of their old one, especially if said new job offered them something that the old one just was not capable of doing.
But this is not the fault of millennials or really any other one employee out there, for that matter. Unfortunately, there are a number of systemic problems that can be identified all too easily across the scope of the working world, at least here in the working world of the United States. Unfortunately, if such problems continue to go unaddressed – or even just not taken as seriously as they really should be – the problem of low employee retention rates is likely to persist, and perhaps even to worsen.
Fortunately, there are a number of solutions that really have the potential to make a difference. For one thing, simply incorporating more diversity throughout the workplace as a whole is something that can prove hugely beneficial. Not only is this something that is likely to increase overall employee happiness and likelihood to stay longer periods of time, but it is something that can actually increase overall work performance as well. The data that has been gathered on the subject more than backs up this claim, showing quite clearly that ethnically diverse workplaces can outperform other workplaces that are less diverse by as much as a full 35%. And even just incorporating more gender diversity can improve performance in comparison to less diverse work spaces by as much as a full 15%.
And this is far from the only change that can be made when it comes to improving outcomes in terms of overall employee happiness and employee retention. Solving the problem of the lack of encouragement that employees feel is also critical. First, let’s take a look at how prominent this problem is, one that that HR executive search firms and other such human resources recruiters have become more and more aware of in recent years. As HR executive search firms will be able to tell you, it is the sad truth that most employees do not feel adequately supported at their jobs, a mere one fifth of them actually feeling that their superiors encourage them to do their best work, something that HR executive search firms and others will tell you is absolutely critical to overall employee retention.
But, as HR executive search firms and other such professionals in the field have found, this is not a problem with no solution. As a matter of fact, helping to mitigate this problem is easier for HR executive search firms and the typical company to get a hold of than you might think. After all, simply instituting something like an employee recognition program is something that has been found by HR executive search firms and other such important players to get some highly desirable results. After all, up to 86% of all places of business who try out such a program find that the impact is higher rates of overall employee happiness, something that can boost retention rates as well as even bolstering performance rates, as happy employees are certainly likely to do better work than unhappy ones.
