Surely you already know the advantages of retaining staff, there are many: Less time spent recruiting and onboarding, faster task completion, great relationships, stored organizational knowledge, etc. When measuring employee morale or tracking projects, pay special attention to medium term employees, as they are most at risk of the seven year itch. If you can [...]
read moreSurely you already know the advantages of retaining staff, there are many: Less time spent recruiting and onboarding, faster task completion, great relationships, stored organizational knowledge, etc.
When measuring employee morale or tracking projects, pay special attention to medium term employees, as they are most at risk of the seven year itch. If you can identify what bothers them earlier rather than later, you can take steps to improve the situation. These approaches might help:
1. Offer a Role Change
Monotony is everone’s biggest enemy. When employees learn to perform all of their job tasks with enough efficiency, it can quickly become very boring. An ideal job should be appropriately intellectually stimulating. If it isn’t, after some time, productivity can decline quickly.
Talk to employees about their career development, and how they can align their current roles with their aspirations. Maybe they can mentor the next generation of team members? Maybe there’s a similar job in the organization where their knowledge and experience would be very valuable?
If you can frame lateral moves as promotions (either of salary, of responsibility, or both), they’re more likely to be accepted. This can boost your employee’s sense of achievement and self-confidence. A clear development course helps to make employees’ objectives clearer, and gets them more focused.
2. Offer a Break
Sometimes deadline after deadline after deadline burns your employees out. Tremendous work pressure can crack the most dedicated and strong-willed person. You should always encourage your team to cash in the paid time-off that they accumulate. If they don’t have enough, consider offering unpaid time off, a cash incentive to take a vacation, or a company trip.
Employees will return from their break feeling refreshed and eager to work. Vacations are calamine lotion for your 7-year itch.
3. Release them to a different project or team
Sometimes the goals of employees are not aligned with those of their project group. Assigning them to another project or team within the organization can help move employees closer to their goals. Even if one project loses vital resources, another will gain them. In the end, if the employee comes out ahead, the organization does too.
4. Let them go
In the worst case scenario, employees feel trapped in the wrong job and at the wrong company. It’s best that you separate on good terms. Help your employee find a new job. For example, a software programmer may want to become a professional photographer, or an unhappy accountant may want to run her own restaurant.
Be civil and help them pursue their dreams. If it doesn’t work out, they’ll be more likely to come back to your organization, or to refer a friend or colleague who would be successful in their old job.
Track employee projects to make sure that they’re working on things they enjoy. Get started on TribeHR today with a free 60-day trial.






