When a good employee outgrows the role.

One of the easiest ways to lose a good person is to assume that because they’re doing well, everything’s fine.

Sometimes the role has simply stopped growing with them.

I see this quite a lot in fashion brands. Someone joins, performs well, becomes trusted, takes on more and gradually gets better than the role they were originally hired to do.

Then nothing really changes.

The job title stays the same. The responsibilities become broader, but not necessarily more interesting. Progression gets talked about vaguely. Another year passes.

Eventually they start looking.

Good people don’t always leave because they’re unhappy

This is where retention can be misunderstood.

Someone doesn’t have to hate their manager, dislike the culture or be desperate for more money before they’ll consider leaving.

Sometimes they just can’t see where they go next in your brand.

This is especially true of ambitious people who learn quickly. Once they’ve mastered the job, doing more of the same isn’t necessarily enough to keep them interested.

By the time they resign, the much-needed conversation about progression is coming too late.

Look at the role, not just the person

If someone is performing strongly, it’s worth looking at whether the role has kept pace with them.

Has the job changed since they joined?

Are they already doing work that sits beyond the original brief?

Have they taken on responsibilities because they’re capable, without those responsibilities ever being formally recognised?

Are there parts of the role they’ve simply stopped learning from?

These are useful conversations to have before somebody appears with another offer in their hand.

Progression doesn’t always mean promotion

Not every business can create a new title every eighteen months and nor should it.

Progression can mean broader responsibility, exposure to different parts of the business, ownership of a project, managing somebody for the first time, developing a new skill or having more influence over decisions.

The important bit is that the person can see some momentum.

If the answer is effectively, “keep doing what you’re doing and we’ll see what happens”, don’t be surprised if they decide to “see what happens” somewhere else.

Sometimes the structure is the problem

There’s another issue I’m seeing more often.

Businesses change quickly, but team structures don’t always change with them.

Roles get added, responsibilities move around and people pick things up because somebody needs to do them. Eventually you can end up with good people sitting in jobs that no longer make much sense.

That’s when it can be useful to look at the team as a whole.

Where are the gaps? Where is work duplicated? Who has grown beyond their original remit? Who could take on more? Does the structure still reflect what the business actually needs now?

Sometimes a better team structure creates the progression you thought you couldn’t accommodate.

Don’t wait for the resignation conversation

Once someone has decided to leave, you’re already trying to change their mind.

It’s much better to have the conversation earlier.

Ask good people what they want to learn next. What they’d like more exposure to. Which parts of their role they’ve outgrown. Where they think they could contribute more.

You won’t always be able to give them everything they want.

You might, however, discover that the person you were worried about losing doesn’t need a completely different company.

They just need a better next step in yours.

If you’d like to see how LIFE supports brands with recruitment, retention and team structure, take a look at our client services.