Ask a manager: our highly-paid, overworked junior staff keep leaving just as we get them fully train

[purlewe]

Yanked from here: https://www.askamanager.org/2021/10/our-highly-paid-overworked-junior-staff-keep-leaving-just-as-we-get-them-fully-trained.html

A reader writes:

I work in an industry that is well known for long, hard hours, especially at junior levels. It’s one that has been all over the newspaper the past couple years for difficulty retaining junior professional staff and attempts to roll out more work-life balance. That said, it’s also (a) very well paid at the junior level, think 23 years old and making $275k-$200k; and (b) very competitive.

We’ve been having issues with junior staff, who each went through a rigorous interview process where the lifestyle was made clear to them (100-hour weeks, in the office every weekend, two year program), quitting after 6-9 months. That is typically just when they are getting useful in what is effectively an apprenticeship program. Some are leaving us for competitors with bigger brand names, but others are making the jump into corporate jobs, usually in finance with mid-stage start-ups. We have raised pay twice in the past six months and have been in the press for a fair bit of success lately. But we can’t do our jobs effectively without junior resources. It’s a huge amount of work to get a 23-year-old working at a professional level, and because it’s client service if they aren’t available evenings / weekends then I have to be (high level manager bringing in significant business). That’s equated to me working each of the past six weekends to try and get junior staff more time off than I ever got when I was coming up, only to have the fourth team member this year quit.

So, obviously we can’t *force* anyone to keep working, but what else can we be doing to keep people for the full two-year program? We already defer most of the comp to year-end, with some smallish amount withheld for 12-24 months. I’m thinking of something along the lines of a contract that would acknowledge that the training provided has value that must be repaid if the person doesn’t stay for 24 months. Or making the majority of the salary and bonus contingent on staying for the full 24 months (i.e., you make $10k per month before bonus, but if you leave before 24 months you must repay $6k per month). I’m sympathetic to the pleas that this job is life-consuming, but it’s ALWAYS been that way and nobody pretends otherwise during the interview process. And, again, I’m doing similar hours in my mid-40s, with a family. This isn’t a hazing process, it’s just what the job is like. Ideally it gets better, although with the junior team working less than I did it seems like that might not be the case any more.

It sounds like labor conditions have changed and your company will need to adapt.

For whatever reason, what you offered in the past was attractive enough to keep people there for the whole two years, but now it’s not. (I suspect the reasons are a combination of our current job-seeker’s market and a broader shift in what workers consider acceptable to put up with, particularly among younger workers. Both of those and especially the latter are good for society, although they’re causing pain for your company.) You’re getting people signing up thinking they can do the hours, but then realizing that 100-hour weeks are soul-crushing and seeing opportunities out there that they like better.

To keep them, you need to be able to compete with the other options they have. That doesn’t just mean money; it means lifestyle too.

You’re looking at ways to penalize them for leaving … but having exhausted, overworked people who are there only because you will bill them if they leave is a recipe for demoralized and resentful staff.

What if you hired more junior staff, had them work fewer hours each, and lowered the pay accordingly? Everyone might be happier with that in the long run. It’s more people to supervise, and that’s more work … but it’s not more work than training people who then leave just as they’re becoming useful. It would also give you a far healthier workplace and would give you access to a pool of candidates who you miss out on entirely right now because they won’t consider working those hours.

Don’t get too attached to “it’s always been this way.” It’s not serving you anymore. And lots of things were always a certain way until someone looked at them and said, “We can do this better.”

Comments

[goljerp]

Just had a flashback to my Ph.D. program in Chemistry, with an Israeli fellow grad student being really annoyed that she had to take a German class to qualify for the language requirement. (My lousy 1 semester of college french was accepted). I mean, late 1990s (as now), Chemistry publications were written in English. (Ironically, a bit of German might've been helpful for me to read one paper which I looked up for my dissertation, and I suppose Russian might have helped when I was looking up the Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction as part of the background for my oral exam (but not really, as the reaction has been described a lot since then)). At least they got rid of the requirement finally, I think.

[cereta]

Wow, yeah, that's a horrid requirement. It's also just...I mean, I'm assuming your fellow grad student was already multi-lingual. I have to wonder if the people who enforce these requirements have ever even asked, "Why are we doing this, again?"

[goljerp]

Oh, yeah. She was fluent in English, as well as Hebrew. But Hebrew didn't count. Nor did Chinese. I just went and looked, and unfortunately the catalogue I kept ('93-94) was after the requirement was dropped for Chemistry. But I remember French and German were OK. (As far as "why are we doing this", I guess the good thing is that they did drop it by 1992 or 1993; why they kept it so long... well, I did get my degree at an Ivy League school.)

[cereta]

Yeah, French and German were the default here, although I got approved for Latin just by asking, and a roommate did the same with Spanish. I ended up taking a class in Catullus for mine, so I can't really regret it, but still: I'd taken three years in high school and one as an undergrad. Not sure why I needed it for a PhD.

ETA: Although I did have the fun of translating "Nobody fucks with guide" in Sentinel fandom. Someone even embroidered it on a pillow.