2/5/2020 The Career-Development Gap: Why Employers Fail To Retain Top Talent

55,726 views | Jul 11, 2012, 11:24am

The Career-Development Gap: Why

Employers Fail To Retain Top Talent
Panos Mourdoukoutas Former Contributor
Markets

This article is more than 2 years old.

Top talent is the most important source of

competitive advantage for every corporation,
especially in high tech industries that compete
on creativity and innovation. That’s why these
companies have the proper management
techniques and the right career-development
programs to retain top talent, or do they?
Career Day (Photo credit: Tulane Public
Relations)
In a recent piece, Forbes editor Frederick E.
Allen points to “stack ranking,” a management technique applied by Microsoft
(NASDAQ:MSFT) that undermines talent retention and company creativity rather
than fostering them. In a study of 1,200 top young managers published in the July-
August 2012 Harvard Business Review, Monika Hamori and Burak Koyuncu identif
a career-development gap between the support top young managers expect to get
from their employers and the actual services they receive in the areas of mentoring,
coaching, training, support from direct manager, support from the senior
management, working as part of global virtual team, and a job in a new function
product division, or market.

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On a scale of 1-5 (5 being the most important), for instance, young managers assigne
a value of 4 to mentoring and coaching, but they valued the service they received fro
their employers slightly below 3. The expectation gap was even greater in training,
where the assigned value was close to 4.5, while the actual value was slightly above 3
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2/5/2020 The Career-Development Gap: Why Employers Fail To Retain Top Talent

That could certainly explain why these young managers were looking for jobs
elsewhere. Seventy-five percent sent out resumes or contracted recruiters to move t
other companies; and 95 percent engaged in networking activities, and eventually le
their companies 28 months after they were hired. But why do companies fail to
accommodate the expectations of their talented employees?

Because of time and money that may end up subsidizing the competition. Mentoring
and coaching require a great deal of time, for both the mentor and the apprentice.
Formal training is costly and requires paid time off work for the employees involved
and there's a dilemma over its effectiveness. “Employers are understandably
reluctant to make big investments in workers who might not stay long. But this
creates a vicious circle: Companies won’t train workers because they might leave, an
worker leave because they don’t get training.”

The Bottom Line: Top talent retention is an expensive proposition. Companies must
either come up with the resources to meet up the expectations of their talented
employees or be constantly in the market to replenish them.

Read more about the Harvard Business article here.

Also read:

Three Ways to Become Rich, One Way to Live the Good Life

Top Ten Reasons Why Large Companies Fail To Keep Their Best Talent

Why It's Better To Stick It Out At A Big Company Instead Of Leaving Fo

A Startup

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2/5/2020 The Career-Development Gap: Why Employers Fail To Retain Top Talent

Panos Mourdoukoutas

I’m Professor and Chair of the Department of Economics at LIU Post in New York. I also teach at
Columbia University. I’ve published several articles in professional jour... Read More

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