Retaining Talent in a Flat Organisation
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Whilst flatter organisations are meant to be more meritocratic, many talented people see only the lack of management positions to aspire to, so how do you retain your talented people?
Only the other day I was talking to someone about their career within a large multi-brand consumer goods company. They commented, “it’s such a flat organisation, there are so few opportunities to progress! Loads of people have had to leave to get management roles. I’m just going to work on one more account and then I’ll be off.” There wasn’t time to continue the conversation, but it made me think what a shame it was that this view was held by so many staff. What can managers do if faced with such a talent retention challenge?
- Career progression in flat organisations is different. Unlike large hierarchical organisations, career development is more likely to be driven through growing their responsibilities in their current role or by taking lateral moves. More senior positions have much broader remits which require greater breadth from successful candidates requiring greater experience. If your team member hankers for rapid upward progression, finding it hard to embrace the reality of the nature of the organisation, you will continually face retention issues with them.
- Finding opportunities. The majority of significant career progression in flat organisations happens by changing and developing their current role. Stretch opportunities like taking on the supervision of a new contract, or project, growing your client portfolio, working on a new product or adding additional team members are a great chance to grow their reputation. Reputation will be the trigger that facilitates a lateral or upward move. As a manager what responsibilities or activities might you delegate to your team to develop them? See our blog Management Superpowers on 5 February re the Art of Delegation
- Career growth through innovation. What ideas and opportunities to develop or improve the business do your team have? Let those who are interested scope out a possible pilot project which they can then propose, gain backing for, and implement. Competition for roles in flat organisations is often much fiercer. Being able to demonstrate self-driven achievements is especially impressive when applying for future management roles – this can give them the edge.
- Cross functional movement. To retain your best talent in the organisation, recognising that their next move and possibly the only way to be promoted, is to move to another part of the organisation altogether, sometimes even to another region or country. Is your team member open to this and if so, what preparation would they have to undertake in order to be considered for such a move? Put them in contact with members of your network in other parts of the business or even involve HR to help facilitate that type of move.
- Regular career conversations are key. For many people, their manager only mentions careers at appraisals. For team members seriously considering their future outside the organisation, annual discussions are insufficient. Trying to discuss their career progress at least once a quarter is paramount, you may need to make it happen even more frequently. It is tempting to avoid this as you value the individual and want to keep them in your team, but retaining them in the organisation is the greater goal. Practical support will make them see that you care about, and acknowledge their aspirations. This will make them more likely to stay longer.
Retaining talent is a challenge in any organisation. Encouraging and supporting your team’s development whilst managing expectations about the potential speed of progress is even more important the flatter the organisation. Emphasising the building blocks for a successful career, communicating these well and consistently over time will help keep your talented people focused on all your organisation has to offer.