All too often our most valuable and successful team members get bored in their current roles and want more. They are hungry for a new challenge or more of a challenge because their current role has become the same old for them. Or they want to broaden their skill set with a new role or they want career progression. There are many reasons this happens in business.
The challenge can be when that employee is so valuable to you in their current role that you can’t afford to lose them from that role. They have effectively become pigeonholed and stuck because of their own success, and as managers, we don’t want to risk losing them from that role because of the value they bring to the role. All too often I see managers and business owners attempt to keep that employee in their current role, thinking that will be best for them as the manager and best for the business.
Sometimes we tell the employee we will have a think about what other options there are for them and we simply do nothing, hoping they will get on with doing what they are so good at doing. Other times we just shut down the idea by saying there are no other opportunities, even when we haven’t really given it consideration. What we are trying to do is to keep that employee in the role that they are so valuable in because we can’t afford to lose them from that role.
In reality, what we have effectively done is lose them not just from the role they are so successful in, but we also lose them from our business altogether. And that’s the worst scenario that can occur.
Unfortunately, I see this situation play out all too often. Many of the candidates I interview are in that situation; after asking many times for other opportunities only to have their requests and feedback fall on deaf ears, they naturally start to look for that opportunity elsewhere. I understand as a business owner that sometimes you simply can’t offer that employee what they want and need in their career; however, all too often we can help them with what they want to achieve, but we stick our head in the sand because it’s not what we really want.
Here are my key pieces of advice for handling this kind of situation, based on what I have learnt over the years:
- Don’t avoid the conversation
If the employee is raising with you that they are interested in other positions in the business, need a new challenge or project, or feel they have more to give, have the conversation, and don’t shut it down. Listen to understand. You need to understand what they want more of, what they want less of, what it looks like in your business and their timeline. Being armed with all the information will allow you to properly weigh up options and consider what you can and can’t offer.
- Take action
It’s important to show the employee you have heard and taken on board their feedback, and communicate what you are going to do. All too often a jobseeker will tell me they have had multiple conversations with their manager about what they want and they never hear anything back and nothing ever changes, hence they start looking elsewhere. Taking action doesn’t necessarily mean that you move them to a new role straight away, but you need to show them that you are trying to consider and work through possible solutions for them.
- Put together a plan
Whether you can or can’t support the employee by giving them what they are seeking, you need a plan. A plan for transitioning some of their current tasks to another employee so they are freed up to take on that new challenge. Or a plan to train up another staff member, if you can’t offer them what they want and you risk losing them altogether from your business. In my experience, that plan might be a transition over many months or even a year, but if the employee can see you are trying to support them and there is a plan, they will buy in. It’s often when nothing happens after multiple conversations that frustration creeps in.
I don’t like surprises, so I have always taken the approach that I’d rather have the hard conversation and be honest with the employee if I can’t offer them what they need and want so that together we can have a plan to best support us both. You’ll support them with taking that next step in their career, while they support you to reduce the big hole they will leave if and when they do leave the business.
However, if they are a valuable employee in my business, I’ll be bending over backward to do everything I possibly can to retain that employee in my business as those kinds of employees are hard to come by. Sometimes we need to think differently to come up with ideas on what we can do to create that new challenge or that new position for the employee, and it’s from those ideas that business growth and success can come.
How do you keep a great employee within your business?
