Do you know how one day you wake up and realize that you've been in the organization for five years, and even though you were promised when you arrived that there was plenty of room for advancement, you're stuck in the same role, which you've been doing on automatic, for a very long time?
According to a joint survey by the Center for Organizational Research and Human Resource Management at the University of Haifa and the AllJobs website, many employees feel this way: Most of the employees who participated in the survey - some of whom are currently job seekers - indicate that the organization they work for does not have a program to cultivate employees with capabilities within the organization. They do not believe that the organization is interested in cultivating and retaining talented employees and do not believe that they are really trying to keep them in the organization.
This feeling of employees is contrary to the impression that many organizations try to create, as if employees are the company's most important asset. According to Prof. Yitzhak Harpaz, head of the Center for Organizational Research and Human Resource Management, these statements in organizations that do not really have talent management programs except for the upper management level are perceived by employees as lip service. "I think the organizations do not see reality," says Harpaz. "There are a few organizations that have programs to promote employees, but they are few. Most organizations say they do, but they do little and the majority are neglected."
- And aren't they afraid that the employees they invested in will leave?
"There is an atmosphere of anxiety in the labor market, of job insecurity, and they take the workers for granted. Why bother? There is a supply of workers, so I don't try. They cultivate the talent who works in R&D, whose output is worth millions to the organization, but not the ordinary worker."
From here, the path to leaving the organization becomes shorter. According to Harpaz, employees who browse job search sites while working are people whose commitment to the organization has decreased due to the treatment they receive and are one step closer to wanting to leave. More than 50% of the survey respondents indicated that they had considered leaving work voluntarily.
According to the survey, approximately 401% of respondents cited what is happening within the organization, both at the systemic level and in the relationship with the manager, as having a major influence on the decision to leave. Organizational policies in the field of human resources (discrimination, lack of opportunity for promotion, and unfair pay) are seen as having a high potential to influence the desire to leave. To this must be added the social environment in which they find themselves, with an emphasis on an abusive manager and difficulties with co-workers.
Sharing and support
How can an organization deal with this situation? According to Aviad Goz, chairman of the Momentum Group, which developed a career navigation model, NEWS, which is implemented in 30 countries around the world, "The gap between the organizations' statements and the employees' feelings can be resolved in two ways: one is to increase the level of management involvement among the employees, and the other is to listen to the employees' wishes.
"In organizations like General Electric or HP, it was decided that each member of management at a certain level would take two or three employees and become their mentor, after undergoing appropriate training. The support, which would include professional and personal help, would usually be at the level of a weekly conversation - and we discovered that this had much more meaning than all the other processes towards the employee, and this is very dramatic, especially for Generation Y employees.
The second way is - in the event that it is not possible to promote or improve the employee's compensation, you can identify with him the areas that interest him or that he excels in and change his role accordingly. For example, a sales manager who will spend 20% of his time training or writing programs. From the organization's perspective, this has almost no cost. And in terms of commitment and involvement - they improve by tens of percent."
Goz talks about another issue that concerns employees: their level of involvement in the organization and their ability to influence processes. In such a dynamic and changing world as the one we live in, he recommends that managers keep employees informed of changes that the organization is undergoing and navigate their careers accordingly. "If you don't keep employees informed of changes, employees feel enormous uncertainty, they don't understand where their careers are going, and many of them become entrenched and withdraw. They tell themselves: 'At least I'll take care of myself,' and this greatly reduces their level of commitment. It's like a family that moves to another city and doesn't involve the children in the decision."
At Yeshir Insurance, it works: it is one of the call center-based companies with the lowest employee turnover rate in the country. According to Dafna Kleiner, VP of Human Resources, one of the company's core values is to retain good employees, and during onboarding, they are made aware that 781 out of all open positions are filled by internal employees.
"Our concept of keeping an employee in the company consists of three serious pillars," says Kleiner. "His manager, who needs to empower him and develop a sense of competence in him; his role - through managing his specific career path; and the company - which needs to be stable, profitable and successful."
"We check the employee's feelings through an anonymous employee satisfaction survey and a service and interface survey, and we condense the surveys through a lot of cross-sectional conversations and conversations with every employee who applied for the tender and did not win, in order to get a mirror image. In addition, we give employees professional courses and self-development courses at our expense, such as office courses or a course from the Adler Institute. The more an employee feels that they are being invested in, the more they will give back. Investing in employees brings wonderful results: loyal, caring, and empathetic employees - and these things return to the company in huge amounts."
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