Squirrel Spotting: The Travails of Attracting and Retaining Talent

The job market is tight, making it paramount for employers to have the type of culture employees really crave, Peter Smith writes.

Peter Smith TheRetailSmiths@gmail.com

Peter Smith is an industry consultant, speaker, sales trainer, and author. He can be reached via email at TheRetailSmiths@gmail.com.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate now stands at 3.5 percent, matching the lowest rate in 50 years.

Retail, in fact, has recovered so well that there are now 208,000 more people employed in the sector than in February 2020, the month before the onset of the pandemic in the United States.

As impressive as those numbers are, however, they signal potentially significant problems for employers in both attracting new talent and, more importantly, retaining their top people.

We are now firmly ensconced in a “buyer’s market” in which employees hold most of the cards. Rarely have they had such leverage when it comes to deciding to stay with their current employers or seek greener pastures elsewhere.

According to Zippia, 65 percent of Americans are actively searching for a new job right now.

In the 2001-2007 version of The Best of Gallup Management Journal, Brian Brim wrote, “Though companies may recognize how crucial it is to engage their workers and may even acknowledge that it must be an ongoing process, the essential principles of employee engagement have not become ingrained.”

If 65 percent of employees are actively searching for new jobs, it is hard to imagine that circumstances have changed much in the 10-plus years since Brim’s article.

“Stop bullshitting people about how great your culture is. If it were true, you wouldn’t be losing people.”

So, what can be done? How can employers mitigate against the possibility of losing their top people and also become more attractive to quality professionals looking for a change?

For starters, stop bullshitting people about how great your culture is. If it were true, you wouldn’t be losing people, and you’d be decidedly more attractive to candidates already in the market for a new job.

You can determine what’s important in your company; the way you treat your people, the compensation structures (for good or bad), whether you invest in your people or not, the things you celebrate, and the things you tolerate.

Despite that, to a great extent your culture is not what you say it is but, rather, what your people experience on a daily basis.

You may believe your culture reflects your values and aspirations, but it may read entirely differently to your current team and to potential new hires.

I visited with a company recently and witnessed a culture that was as close to soul-sapping as I could have imagined. Despite there being lots of people in the space, there was no energy at all in the building.

The employees didn’t look like they were having much fun, and I saw precious little evidence of people joyfully engaging with each other.

As I walked around, I noticed that the desks and cubicles were devoid of the personalization so typical of these types of offices, with scant evidence of family, hobbies, or other interests.

There also was no music playing; the overall effect was of a dour, uninspiring, and impersonal space.