Turnover rates, retention strategies, tenure – different terms circling the same issue. How long do people stay in their jobs?

A global view discussed in Welcome to the world of job-hopping, finds:

According to research by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, while Greeks workers tend to stay put for 13 years, French employees for 12 and Germans for a decade, workers in Britain and Ireland have a devil-may-care approach to job mobility. Yet neither is as mobile as Americans, who move jobs on average every four years.

Among senior executives, the expectations are more traditional, according to an Association of Executive Search Consultants (AESC) study.

Of the European executives surveyed, 39% had worked for their current organisation for between two and five years, with 51% estimating they will have worked for between four and seven organisations by the end of their career. Forty percent of Europeans stated that a quarter of the senior management staff at their current organisation had been with the company for less than five years.

Conversely, the College Student Career Confidence Survey of recent college graduates and college students throughout the U.S found:

• 61% of college students expect to remain with their first employers for less than three years.
• Only 16% anticipate continuing to change jobs as quickly throughout their careers.
• Instead, 34% said they plan to change jobs every 3 to 4 years, and 50% expect to switch employers every 5 years or longer.

And consider the lightning speed job changes of “Generation Sean” striving for 52 jobs in 52 weeks!

The risk for losing employees is ever present according to The Walker Loyalty Report for Loyalty in the Workplace, 2007, which found:

Although the percentage of truly loyal employees – 34 percent – is unchanged from 2005, the percentage of high-risk employees (36 percent) now outnumbers those who are truly loyal. (High-risk employees plan to leave their current employer within the next two years.)

So you should be focusing on retention strategies at all levels of your workplace or your employees may be the ones singing Hello, I Must Be Going.

I don’t know that I’d go as far as the Perth Leadership Institute’s release saying the [credit] crisis was due at least in part to a lack of business acumen on the part of managers and executives in the industry and that this has been perpetuated by the lack of leadership development programs that identify and develop business acumen.

But I do agree with study results tying leadership training and development to business success.

Source: Human Resource Executive® and ERC Dataplus

And also with the subhead of the Fortune article, How top companies breed stars: The world's best companies realize that no matter what business they're in, their real business is building leaders.

Leadership development is a vital component of talent management. Concerns about leadership vacuums are highlighting its importance. Although leadership development may not be at the core of today’s economic catastrophe, it plays a key role in driving business success and deserves increased attention.

The Ipsos Public Affairs survey of US workers commissioned by the Fairfax County Economic Development Authority (FCEDA) found:
• 88% consider themselves to be creative.
• 75% thought their employer valued creativity.
• 63% said their positions were creative.
• 61% thought their companies were creative.

Fairfax County sees these results pointing to a creativity gap in the workplace; and it may be that employee creativity is being stifled at work. The book The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life by Richard Florida ties economic success to creative people in creative settings.

And Larry Huston’s interview recorded in Innovation Networks: Looking for Ideas Outside the Company posits that future competitive advantage will depend on "innovation networks" -- individuals and organizations outside a company that can help it solve problems and find new ideas for creating growth.

We think talent drives business performance because top people are passionate about innovation and creativity. The numbers in the Ipsos study show a steady decline from how people feel about their own creativity down to the organization as an entity.

What if everyone knew how their personal goals tied directly to the organization’s goals? What if performance was part of the culture instead of an annual compliance event? What if everyone could see a clear career path based on personal growth?

What if nearly everyone in your organization considered themselves to be creative? What if everyone felt they were in a creative position in a creative company…

The eWeek blog entry Wither the Resume? reminds us how quickly we have evolved in how people apply for jobs. Capturing information has advanced rapidly from manual scanning and sorting, resume parsing, and email resume attachments to a full automated online application process. The unstructured options for gathering information on candidates have also grown as fast as the Internet.

Social networking profiles are getting more popular for everyone, a staple for Generation Y—a certainty for Generation V—and are good for referrals. Facebook offers new recruiting opportunities. Second Life avatars are virtual recruiting targets where you can sell to the persona and hire the person. Video resumes attract attention but expose new issues. And Googling candidates may have more risks than rewards.

We agree that career sites featuring Web 2.0 recruiting features may have eliminated the need for a traditional resume other than as a form of marketing collateral that’s left behind at the personal interview.

However, we feel the consistent methodology of a structured profile in a single system of record still delivers the most advantages and rewards for candidates and companies.

Online applications get recruiters closer to the person’s true abilities, certifications, and experience faster and more efficiently than intermediary online personas. Capturing data with an online form enables automated pre-screening and proactive internal talent pool recruitment – in the real world.

The Veritude study titled Working Together, Working Apart: When It Comes To Workforce Planning, HR and Business Leaders Agree Their Working Relationship Needs Work sounds like the marriage counseling conundrum, “He said, she said.”

There’s no question that the focus of HR and business leaders differs operationally – that’s why they have different jobs! But to drive effectiveness, it is instructive to understand the view from the other side.

There’s long been concern about HR not measuring up, yet we also see opportunities in HR’s evolving role. The Veritude study found alignment between the two groups in identifying talent acquisition and recruitment as the top strategic business challenges and provides these top line recommendations for HR:

1. Be Strategic
2. Develop Strong Working Relationships by Setting Goals
3. Keep Your Eye on Operations

Current business challenges such as cost cutting, rapid growth, increased competition, and entering emerging markets all have talent dimensions. Success requires strategic talent management practiced as a partnership by HR professionals and business leaders.

Listening to The Beatles song When I’m 64 from Cirque du Soleil’s LOVE soundtrack brings to mind one of the most sobering demographic details in the war for talent: the huge wave of baby boomers heading for retirement.

The facts have been out there for a long time. Large US companies may lose 40 percent or more of their top-level talent by 2010; nearly 77 million workers will soon be eligible for retirement. Yet it seems the business community’s focus remains on the travails of replacing CEOs, as evident in articles such as No More Bench Strength. The reality is the baby boomer leadership vacuum extends much deeper in organizations.

Ernst & Young’s 2007 Aging U.S. Workforce Survey of Fortune 1000 HR executives offers these contradictory statistics:

• 62% say retirements would cause talent gaps or brain drain.
• 41% are concerned about middle management brain drain.
• 75% of those using succession planning monitor only senior management.

The lack of comprehensive succession planning in companies is one of the most concerning talent issues today. Succession planning should be a pervasive practice throughout organizations, not reserved for senior management.

The rash of recent CEO departures elevates a high profile subset of succession situations. But the issue of organizational bench strength is not all about the team manager on the field. Winning organizations develop succession plans for the whole team from the pitching staff to the reserve outfielders based on performance metrics.

Notably, Watson Wyatt’s 2007 HR Technology Trends study of 182 large companies found that a third of them plan to adopt new technology solutions for succession planning in the next two years. Maybe that’s a hint of Good Day Sunshine.

We’ve all used Google to search for people. These can include colleagues, friends, and even old flames. More specifically, you can search and connect with friends and groups using social networking sites.

Consequently, there’s been no lack of discussion about employers checking out candidates online—especially on sites such as Facebook and MySpace—to do some amateur “background checking” on potential employees. For example, a solid one-half of advertising and marketing executives admitted to it.

So here’s a turn of the tables. The article, Cyber-vetting managers face backlash, cites:

A study by UK recruitment firm Manpower has found nearly half of workers would feel outraged if they discovered an employer had used social networking sites such as Facebook, Bebo or Friends Reunited to look up information about them. And more than half – 56 per cent – said they would consider such actions unethical.

Where’s the moral high ground? The right answer is to treat all candidates respectfully which includes providing a good candidate experience from the first point of contact all the way through. Good communication (from both sides) and disclosure about the process will garner admiration, not condemnation.

More importantly, don’t choose to peep into the social persona or avatar of an individual and cut corners on real background checking. That could expose your company to avoidable risks.

How many times have you seen the phrase “getting a seat at the executive table” associated with the aspirations of HR business recognition? Maybe it’s time to realize that HR can do more than just sit there, especially considering the Top Trends Changing the Face of HR. HR can set the table by fostering a talent mindset that aligns human capital with business goals.

Two of the new roles described in the Role of HR Executive is Undergoing Big Changes had resonating bullets that hit the mark for us because together they combine talent management and on demand delivery:

1. The talent manager.
Talent management is a complex collection of connected HR processes that delivers a simple fundamental benefit for any organization: higher business performance.

We all know that teams with the best people perform at a higher level. Leading organizations know that exceptional business performance is driven by superior talent. People are the difference. Talent management is the strategy.

2. The self-service leader.
With software as a service (SaaS) delivered on demand, HR can now provide new processes directly to executives, managers, and employees without IT intervention. HR has succeeded in self-service benefits, employee information, and payroll stubs to cut costs and add convenience. We say: the more browser, the better. Enterprise recruiting and performance management offer the same great opportunities for quick self-service wins.

Of course, as Gary Salton shows in Human Resources VP’s “Seat at the Table”, the skills of HR executives must be up to the task…