Professor Vlatka Hlupic: Mindset and organisational culture can influence job-hopper retention

Professor Vlatka Hlupic

Job-hopping could be a choice, or it might be a necessity. In some cases, people change jobs because they are seeking new challenges, greater growth or extra income. Far too often, however, individuals switch employment because of bad management or poor retention efforts.

Many job-hoppers could, therefore, be retained with proactive developmental opportunities, targeted motivational activities and good communications, and by providing inspirational management approaches and a caring organisational culture.

It is likely that job-hoppers will know what they do and do not want from their management and organisation. With the right approach, they can be made to feel they have finally found their longer-term base.

To assist leaders and organisations in retaining talent and becoming more engaging, I have developed an emergent leadership model with five levels of mindset and organisational culture. This develops from level one, which is focused on a ‘lifeless’ mindset and ‘apathetic’ culture, to level five, which features a ‘limitless’ mindset, a passion for the organisation’s services and customers, and an ‘unbounded’ culture.

A particularly significant change occurs when an organisation makes the move from level three, which is based around ‘ordered competence’, to level four, where the keywords are collaboration, trust, transparency, purpose and teamwork. This is the level at which organisations experience a step change in engagement, innovation, performance and profit.

Interestingly, at level four, organisations have more proactive and successful retention strategies and are able to attract and keep their talent, while providing opportunities for growth and purposeful, intrinsically motivating work. These organisations leverage their human capital and can more easily retain job-hoppers, or even create ‘boomerangs’, where employees are motivated to rejoin the organisation after they have left.

Professor Vlatka Hlupic is visiting professor at Birkbeck, University of London and professor of business and management at the University of Westminster