Your lack of transparency with your strategy is costing you your best employees

By Liz Gehl

Despite the challenging job market in the adult beverage industry many employed candidates who are standouts are making bold choices – leaving their current jobs without another role lined up. They no longer have the patience to wait and see how things pan out. Many employers are concentrating on getting through the day to day rather than looking at the future state of the industry, and how their business can be successful in this new framework.

The lack of transparency in company strategy, or simply the lack of a strategy, is the main driver for their desire to leave. Typically, this is coupled with a culture that has changed. The combination of the two creates a scenario where those who are financially secure can decide to walk away, feeling confident they’ll be able to land another role within 6-12 months.

Completing a reorganization in the first quarter only to rehire for the same roles a few months later at a significantly lower payrate isn’t a strategy. It’s a short-term solution. Those new hires already have one foot out of the door. When a person has one foot out of the door, they aren’t fully present in their role and likely won’t ever be.

Employers create a scenario where an unemployed person takes the role because they need to and assume that the person will be “grateful to just have a job”. Some will, but the majority of people will have a tinge of resentment as they feel undervalued. Continuing to have the old school way of thinking about employment i.e. “you’re lucky to be here” is the fastest way to lose great people and crush your culture.

What can you do to ensure this doesn’t happen at your company?

• Provide as much information as possible. Clearly you can’t share everything, but you can share some details. Any amount of information is better than being blindsided and completely surprised.

• When you are able to share the strategy, give employees an option to exit. Those who volunteer and choose this path will feel that they had a say in the matter, rather than it being made for them.

• Ask your employees “what is no longer working for you?”. Done in a positive manner, this is a great way to gauge professional alignment. Can you (or the company) effect change and support their professional needs? If the answer is clearly no, it’s time to support their growth by encouraging them to look beyond their current role.

• Be transparent with the timelines. A “it’s going to be a bit nuts for the next X months, but here is what you can expect once we get through this…” goes a long, long way.

Many of the companies that are notorious for reorganizing are still attracting top talent, simply because they’ve done the work to support their employees both past and present. If I had a dollar for every laid off candidate that said to me “I’m just grateful that they were honest enough to give me a heads up” I wouldn’t be as rich as if I had a dollar for every candidate who said “they blindsided me, I’ve contacted a lawyer”.

Crushing your culture happens in the silence between what leadership knows and what employees are told. By shifting from the “old school” mindset to a framework of radical transparency, you don’t just protect your reputation you protect your business’s future. How will you choose to communicate your next shift?

Seeking more hiring tips? Connect with Liz Gehl on LinkedIn