Jeff of All Trades

Weird headline yeah?

This post brought to you by even more random than usual thoughts that bounce around in my head. Today, that topic is turnover and how it can be great.

From early career to now I’ve been several places that have an unhealthy view on people leaving. I’ve seen higher ups that get mad, peers that get jealous, and people leaving hoping they never have to come back again. This, is at least some of the symptoms of a company with an unhealthy talent pipeline.

My philosophy is that when someone leaves for another job it is something to celebrate. Regardless of the bind it might put your current company in, people bettering themselves is worth celebrating every single time.

What does a healthy talent pipeline look like?

Just off the top of my dome, here are things I like to see:

1. Opportunities for current high potential employees to grow (promotion, raises, responsibilities)
2. Opportunities for high performers to apply their skills where they are comfortable (without it holding up others)
3. Hiring managers/teams/managers willing to take on extra headcount, even when not needed, for someone that is a great fit for the team
4. Employees leaving on good terms (willing to come back, welcome back) to better themselves
5. Training and mentoring available to identify each team members strengths and opportunities (with action plans to play to their strengths and improve their opportunities)
6. Fair and consistent handing of under performers and action being taken to address and remove issues
7. Internship program
8. A means to recruit and budget to do so

(note I’ll work on a terminology page later, but when I say high potential its people that will likely move up into leadership positions and when I say high performer its folks that perform well and could move up technically but perhaps not so much managing people).

Where’s the celebrating?

So, in all of that, why would you celebrate losing people? You’ve developed and coached these people. You’ve trained them and struggled with them. And after you do all that you do, they leave. Ask yourself this, WHY did you do all that? For me, its the following:

I want people to succeed and thrive. I care about the people first. When I’m mentoring someone, working on action plans for their development, or identifying their strengths and opportunities I’m actively giving them advice and tools to help their whole career; Not just their direction at the current company. In the end, the hardest work is put in by the employee when it comes to improvement. Their accomplishments are their own, not yours.

So, when someone I’ve been working on comes to me with a resignation letter, many times I already knew it was coming because we prepared for interviews and other things at some point. If not, my first concern is that they are going somewhere good for them and for the right reasons.

Having folks leave your organization/work unit for other opportunities should be a sign of a healthy talent pipeline. But it could also be the opposite if people are leaving to get away.

So, in my experience, people leaving is worth celebrating because they are usually leaving for great opportunities and you have even more opportunities ahead to grow and develop even more people.

Your thoughts?

What do you think? Surely I don’t have the perfect outlook and haven’t covered even remotely all the bases. What did I miss? What’s been your experiences with healthy talent pipelines? Inversely what’s been your experiences with unhealthy talent pipelines?