Face it: Job hopping is a new reality. So stop thinking you can keep talent around for a lifetime.
Scientists believe our distant ancestors spent a lot more of their time noshing on leaves because they lived off the land. Back then, they needed an appendix to digest all those greens. But these days even those of us who love a good salad, don’t need the appendix. In fact, it really does nothing much now except occasionally get infected (though the under-loved organ has recently been rehabilitated slightly).
What does this information have to do with entrepreneurs? More than you might imagine. As it turns out, the idea of vestigial structures can apply to organizations as well as anatomy.
That’s the essential takeaway from a thought-provoking Tammy Erickson post on the HBR blogs recently. In it, Erickson argues that certain business practices are as long-lost as our distant forbears’ eating habits – like the jobs-for-life model, for example. Neither workers nor companies these days truly expect employees to trade unswerving loyalty for the company’s benevolent and lifelong protection, but like the troublesome appendix that has outstayed its usefulness, many organizations retain talent management practices that only made sense when the loyalty-for-security deal was on the table. Erickson writes:
…to read this article in full, visit leading US small business resource, Inc.
