Why do employees continue to job-search?
(Even when they already have a good job)
Professional development series
This is Laura Lee Rose, a business and life coach that specializes in professional development, time management, project management and work-life balance strategies. In my GoTo Academy: Soft Skill Tools for the GoTo Professional continuous online coaching series, I go into office etiquette on various real-world IT topics in detail.
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In the recent interview with Steve Wynkoop (founder of SSWUG.org) we covered the “hiring” topic (don’t miss another professional newsletter tip—signup for the free newsletter here). This article covers the topic in more detail.
Two recent surveys found that a majority of full-time workers continue searching out job opportunities, usually online and often through social media. What are the pluses and potential pitfalls of continually being on the search?
My first recommendation to employers is to not take “continually searching” personally. There are many reasons individuals window-shop. People often droop over the newest sports-car or gadget. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that they are unhappy with their current toys.
There are often many reasons for job-window-shopping:
1) If workers are not satisfied with their current work environment, they will continually look elsewhere.
The advantage to this is that many people can handle a ‘bad working environment’ as long as they see a light at the end of the tunnel (a potential new position in the horizon). Conduct frequent one-on-one meetings to understand what is lacking in your employees career development plans.
2) People are always curious. This is an advantage to everyone. Employees should be encouraged to bring these new desires and new knowledge to their manager to see if there are appropriate jobs opportunities in your current company that fits. Management would be prudent to hold frequent career development one-on-one meetings, so that they understand what their talented employees are looking forward to doing.
3) Excellent employees are always forward looking. If the employee sees no ‘next step’ within their current company, they will look more seriously at their next step outside of their current company. Management would be smart to continually outline attractive and progression job roles for their best employees.
4) People need to feel valued and want to be continually challenged in their area of passion. At a certain professional level, it is not ‘money’ that satisfies. The best employees are attracted toward an increase of mastery and autonomy in the areas that they are passionate about. If management isn’t listening, they are likely to lose their most valuable employees — because it is the talented that walk and the weak that stay.
5) If management uses this opportunity to negatively affect the employee’s advancement opportunities, then management is short-sighted. The employee is doing exactly what they need to do to create the most effective and efficient match between what they want to do with their careers and what they are actually doing with their careers. The employee is acting responsibly. Management would be acting responsibly by listening and reviewing current company’s opportunities to better match their employee’s talents and passion.
Conclusions:
Don’t wait until the top-performers leave your company to figure this out. If you don’t invest in your current employees’ career development, then you will be left with only low to mediocre performers (which makes your management job that much more difficult).
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