Hacking The Career: What Companies Should Do When Employees Quit

By Jane Reed

Apr 07, 2016 05:56 AM EDT

The traditional career is now being slowly dissolved. It's a disruptive change in the business setting in the past decade.

What is a traditional career? Americans used to join a company and hope for job security and tenure - for life. These workers stay for 30 and 40 years until retirement. But today, the average worker stays in their employment for 4.4 years, according to a report from Fast Company.

What has driven this statistic? Millenials can be one of the groups affecting this diverse change. Millenials are changing jobs twice than the average worker, according to a Forbes report. Millenials thrive on meaning, purpose and growth.

Many may think that the solution to this problem is to build a flexible, meaningful workplace, and give people benefits like free food, unlimited vacation, and lavish bonuses. Unfortunately, these are not the solutions. Companies, businesses and organizations should completely redesign heir entire structure. The New Organization: Different by Design talks about how there should be an internal change since the traditional career is long gone. Restructuring also means a change in company focus, mission and resources.

How will that work? Understanding first that the traditional career is driven by managerial and professional groups, companies must understand that the functional and specialized aspect is crucial. The managerial path takes the employee to senior management while the professional path takes you to technical expertise or team management.

Companies need to make their restructuring work by succession management. It's a complete rethinking of succession. Establish that companies and organizations have programs built on growth. Gone are the days of tenure, Americans now-a-days look for development opportunities. However, succession management is only one of the steps that can encourage employees to stay.

Many companies may not be like Google/Alphabet, where JobsNHire reported that it's the best company to work for but that doesn't mean these companies should not change. The industry is changing, and everyone is catching up.