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Naeemah Elias

Attrition 2: Leaving to Learn


Let’s keep digging into the reasons people leave their companies: Learning Opportunities. 


  • Growth or Glass ceiling ✔

  • Boredom ✔

  • Learning opportunity

  • Manager (escaping or drawn to)

  • Culture (Toxic work environment)

  • Money 

  • Personal reasons



3 quick scenarios:

  1. I needed an entry level hire to learn the business continuity function and handle a lot of the day-to-day work as we transformed the process. I hired a young professional who moved from Wisconsin to join my team. She had no experience in continuity, but was looking to move to the East Coast, and to learn finance fundamentals. She worked for me about two years. When we agreed that it was time for her next step, there was no available promotion for her on my team. I sponsored her for a role with a huge learning curve in another division. This young lady went on to get her masters degree at Oxford and is now working for a boutique venture capital firm in Berlin. She didn’t join my team because she had a passion to do business continuity for the rest of her life. She wanted to learn and grow, and the role was the catalyst cultivating the skill set that would eventually launch her career. During her time at State Street, she added enormous value across multiple departments, and she recruited high quality talent to join our teams.

  2. The second example was a mid career professional. I needed a hire to help me to design, implement, and manage a third-party risk process. This young lady did not see an opportunity for growth within her function, so she decided to take a step down from vice president to my AVP position in order to get the implementation experience. Once she stood up the program, she worked her way back to VP. She went on to learn governance, risk, and tangential processes in other divisions. And now she is a senior vice president leading the types of processes that my team and others helped her to learn. This professional added value across four divisions as she built her skills. 

  3. The third example is a young man who started his career as an IT intern. He moved through a couple of corporate processes before taking on a role on my team building a talent mobility process. At the same time, he took a leadership role in an Employee Resource Group. In our mentorship conversations, he was always intentional about learning opportunities. He chose each next step with a focus on his growth and development. In the meantime, he coaches and develops peers and jr colleagues.


Each of these colleagues prioritized learning in their intentional career pathways, and their process added value for multiple teams and colleagues along the way. The benefit to the company is undeniable. Our thirst for opportunities to expand our knowledge and understanding drives the decisions we make every day. People leave managers and teams that they enjoy in the quest to grow as professionals. Absent truly challenging growth moments, talent stagnates and morale declines. Alternatively, companies who prioritize learning opportunities groom their own future leaders.


How can you facilitate employee growth?

  • Delegate interesting, substantive projects and mentor through the design and implementation

  • Cultivate opportunities to take on stretch projects

  • Encourage employees to join and lead employee resource groups

  • Assign employees to be your officer in charge when you are out of the office, and leave real work to be done during that time.


BIG WIN IDEA:

If you’re in a stage of your career where you are frequently presented with speaking engagements, initiatives to lead, board positions, etc., consider declining those invitations and recommending the junior professionals in your purview. This is an amazing way to challenge them, push them outside of their comfort zones, and highlight them for really incredible adventures. 


We'll close the Attrition conversation in the next edition with consideration of Manager and Culture drivers.


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