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

[cereta]

Is there a reason LW is being so coy about the job? Other than the "23-year-old," which I suspect is camouflage, I'm just...dude, you're a lawyer. We get it.

I can't tell you how many times I've run up against, "this is how we always do it" in my career. The one for me was the foreign language requirement that nearly torpedoed my Ph.D., which was utterly stupid because like 90% of all new scholarship in my field was in English, and what wasn't was in ancient Greek.

So to LW, I say: fuck that noise. What you've "always" done isn't working, but you seem determined to stick with a failing model just because you've lived with insane work outs. Do something new!

[heavenscalyx]

Oy, seriously? Not even a faint thought of trying to figure out that the culture is the problem and Millennials and Zoomers have zero interest in breaking themselves the way GenX has? Why does it require an advice columnist to suggest that maybe the way "it's always been" is BAD?

[watersword]

The OP is in the comments at AAM, Ctrl-F for "Vaca", and their comments are so sad, they have been brainwashed and it's genuinely horrifying to witness. The cognitive distortions are ...wow.

[oursin]

it’s ALWAYS been that way
'And our motto is "what does not kill you, makes you stronger!'
AAAAARRRRGGHHHH.
There is a telling scene in the mid-1990s TV hospital drama series Cardiac Arrest concerning this as it appertains in medicine with junior doctors: the sleep-deprived Andrew Colin's 'Do you feel lucky, punk?' speech in to the administrator who has told him to suck it up and deal over lack of relief and extended duty (3 days and 3 nights without a break), who then ends up on his ward with a threatened heart attack.

[minoanmiss]

I SO wanted to respond to OP with, "unfortunately for you, Lincoln freed the slaves".

[tielan]

Red flag workplace, all over.

Money does not make up for being at the beck and call of the workplace and most particuarly for the younger generations. And good on them, I say!

[petrea_mitchell]

My favorite newsletter, Money Stuff, wrote about these issues a couple times a while back. The immediate context was about complaints from the junior bankers at Goldman Sachs, but it applies to investment banking in general. Main piece here, an additional thought here (at the "Wall Street culture" subheading).

It is apparently an issue for that whole industry that people used to put up with two years of that because having made it through was a valuable elite credential that would open other doors for them, and now people are starting to see it more and more in terms of being a job, which leads to heretical thoughts about maybe getting weekends off or demanding better pay.

[mommy]

Oh, geez. 100 hour workweeks means 14 hours of work every single day without a single day off. Expecting two years of that schedule is ridiculous. No wonder folks are jumping ship!

[katiedid717]

Hey LW, I'm working 65 hours per week for $65k/year and previously spent 11 years working at a family business where I was verbally abused on the regular. Please hire me, I will definitely withstand the 2 year training program, especially since that level of pay will let me hire a housekeeping, order all of my meals pre-made, and help me pay off my mortgage and car loan.

[torachan]

Right now I work scheduled 50 hours a week and sometimes more like 55-60 if we're short handed or have something going on, and I really cannot imagine working double that. What are you even doing with all that money you're making when you're working practically all your waking hours? Why?

I agree with the advice that the best thing they can do is to hire more people for fewer hours.

[conuly]

Gosh, why on earth wouldn't these kids want to ruin their health, their minds, their relationships, and their lives for that sweet paycheck?

[xenacryst]

Cry me a fucking river, LW. You enjoy breaking your back, your heart, and your soul for the dollar, but some of the rest of us don't. Give me a decent wage, time off for my own sanity and that of my loved ones, and fight like hell for my rights and equality, and maybe we'll start talking, but until then we're going to milk you dry and leave you to cry.