A culture of continuous development: the secret to bucking the great resignation trend?

A desire to grow pro­fes­sion­al­ly to pur­sue new career oppor­tu­ni­ties – and the tal­ent drain employ­ers face by not sup­port­ing those ambi­tions with the right train­ing – is one of the big dri­vers of the great res­ig­na­tion. Accord­ing to a recent sur­vey by tal­ent experts Right Man­age­ment, 73% of UK employ­ees believe their employ­ers don’t car­ry any respon­si­bil­i­ty for their devel­op­ment, and 81% of UK employ­ees say they don’t have a writ­ten career plan in place with their employ­er.

The dif­fer­ence such oppor­tu­ni­ties make is what sets pro­fes­sion­als that thrive apart from their ordi­nary coun­ter­parts, accord­ing to Pitch, a col­lab­o­ra­tive pre­sen­ta­tion soft­ware com­pa­ny that late last year released its “Thriv­ing Teams” report, doc­u­ment­ing insights from a sur­vey of 2,000 US and UK dig­i­tal work­ers.

Work­ers that the report iden­ti­fies as thriv­ing are 35% more like­ly to have coach­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties, and 52% more like­ly to feel they have sup­port from their employ­er in pro­gress­ing along their cho­sen career paths.

HSBC is one firm that has tak­en this con­sid­er­a­tion seri­ous­ly, cre­at­ing an upskilling pro­gramme in tan­dem with the roll­out of its inter­nal tal­ent mar­ket­place match­ing peo­ple to projects, as an impor­tant vehi­cle for the bank to devel­op its work­force and retain tal­ent.

While tal­ent mar­ket­places are becom­ing a grow­ing cor­po­rate trend to boost engage­ment, sat­is­fac­tion and loy­al­ty – and a way for employ­ers to turn the great res­ig­na­tion into the great re-engage­ment, as a num­ber of experts have repo­si­tioned it in the media – HSBC has recog­nised that the suc­cess of this strat­e­gy hinges on its abil­i­ty to devel­op its peo­ple in line with the demand for new skills. That’s why it also rolled out a new learn­ing plat­form in par­al­lel with its tal­ent mar­ket­place to upskill its teams.

“We want­ed to estab­lish a move­ment to cre­ate a cul­ture of con­tin­u­ous growth and devel­op­ment at the bank,” HSBC’s group head of HR trans­for­ma­tion, Melanie Lee, told audi­ences at the Gloat Live vir­tu­al con­fer­ence.

“We want­ed our employ­ees to be empow­ered to col­lab­o­rate and dri­ve their own skills and careers, to pre­pare them for the world both with­in and also beyond HSBC, devel­op­ing con­fi­dence, curios­i­ty and com­pe­ten­cy.”

HSBC’s learn­ing expe­ri­ence plat­form, Lee shared, pro­vides a sin­gle point for peo­ple to access learn­ing from across inter­nal and exter­nal con­tent providers and sources, sur­fac­ing rec­om­men­da­tions for peo­ple based on their pref­er­ences and devel­op­ment goals. The com­pa­ny is also able to cre­ate busi­ness and skill-spe­cif­ic learn­ing path­ways tai­lored to indi­vid­u­als and teams.

The con­ver­gence of the two plat­forms, Lee added, is “a pow­er­ful skills ecosys­tem for our peo­ple”. If some­one isn’t suc­cess­ful at secur­ing one of the oppor­tu­ni­ties they are matched with in the tal­ent mar­ket­place, they will receive a direct link to rel­e­vant resources with­in the learn­ing expe­ri­ence plat­form to help them bridge that gap. Then when some­one updates their skillset on their pro­file, that infor­ma­tion is also updat­ed with­in the tal­ent mar­ket­place to help match the per­son with new oppor­tu­ni­ties.

In par­al­lel, com­pa­nies also need to dou­ble down on how they devel­op and coach lead­ers. That’s in light of a recent HiBob and Fiverr study of 1,000 US-based HR lead­ers, where 46% say that man­agers and direc­tors are leav­ing their com­pa­nies more so than entry-lev­el employ­ees, under­lin­ing how the great res­ig­na­tion is man­i­fest­ing in the upper ech­e­lons of busi­ness.

To build the right kind of lead­er­ship to dri­ve an organ­i­sa­tion for­ward, com­pa­nies should hire for cul­ture and val­ues fit first, then focus on upskilling from with­in once the right tal­ent with the desired attrib­ut­es and mind­set are secured. That’s the approach tak­en by Chem­istry group, a tal­ent strat­e­gy con­sul­tan­cy that works with the likes of Exper­ian and The Co-oper­a­tive to build lead­er­ship qual­i­ties that align with a business’s spe­cif­ic cul­ture.

“Cul­ture is extreme­ly impor­tant to an organ­i­sa­tion, as it real­ly frames the entire employ­ee-employ­er rela­tion­ship. Hir­ing pure­ly for skills means you are ignor­ing this cul­tur­al-val­ues com­po­nent, and run­ning the risk of a mis­align­ment,” explains Diar­muid Har­vey, Chemistry’s head of sci­ence.

Cul­ture, Har­vey adds, and where an individual’s per­son­al val­ues are aligned with that of the com­pa­ny, can be a more pow­er­ful moti­va­tor than ben­e­fits and salary. Where HSBC has made skills and career devel­op­ment part of its cul­ture is where this nar­ra­tive gets inter­est­ing: over 120,000 of the company’s 220,000 employ­ees world­wide are engag­ing with its learn­ing plat­form, which reg­is­tered 1.5 mil­lion con­tent views last year.

It bodes well for the glob­al expan­sion of HSBC’s tal­ent mar­ket­place beyond its ini­tial mar­kets of the US, UK, India and Sin­ga­pore. The dou­ble wham­my of skills and oppor­tu­ni­ties is rein­vig­o­rat­ing HSBC as a place to diver­si­fy and expand your career, with­out chang­ing com­pa­nies. Per­haps it’s hit on a secret for­mu­la that will buck the great res­ig­na­tion trend.