Jobhop Jobhop's blog : How Do You Keep Your Employees From Job Hopping?

Unless you’re an employer who has been fast asleep for the last few years you’ll know that the average lifespan of a job is just three years, job hopping is the norm, employees are after new experiences and they want more than just a good salary.

So how do you keep your employees from job hopping?

Perhaps the question should be, how do you keep your employees from job hopping to another company?

Job hoppers are good to have, they’re ambitious, they’re agile, they’re well connected, they’re up for new experiences, they won’t ever be without a job because even if technology changed every job role a company has to offer, they would adapt to a new role quickly.

On the downside you can’t put a job hopper into a boring role and expect them to do it day in, day out, they just won’t. But is that what you want from you employees? Do you want plodders who just go through the motions every day? What happens when you have to pivot your service or product, will your plodders be able to cope, will they be able to hit the ground running? Probably not.

So, this is what must happen; you need to keep your job hoppers and one of the primary ways you will achieve that is to stop them from getting bored! How do you do that? You do that by giving them the freedom to job hop within the company. Employees today crave to learn, they crave to be challenged and experience different responsibilities.

Perhaps you should you offer an employee rotational programme.

Take a leaf from Hootsuite who have a stretch programme.

Employees get a chance to try different roles in different departments within the organisation, adding more skills to their toolkit.

Hootsuite reckon that it helps employees find a new calling, or it might just cure an itch when they realise that they’ve now tried something else but would rather go back to their original role. Whatever they decide it helps Hootsuite to retain talented employees who want to grow and evolve.

Google also has something similar, called the bungee programme, in fact, Hootsuite was inspired by Google when they put their stretch programme together.

Google encourages its employees to bungee jump into different areas and departments, to gain new skills and even a new job role because some employees don’t want to return to their original role.

As well as employees gaining new experiences and new skills, they also gain new friends around the company because this is a very social way of working. Job hopping within the company breaks down barriers; it removes the “them and us” attitude like you find at some other companies where departments work against each other.

The results are happier, more experienced, skilled employees, better productivity and high employee retention.

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