Even good teams and organizations can suffer from attrition and face the challenge of retaining the best talent.
Creating a stable group of colleagues can present quite an obstacle in the age of a fast-moving and highly mobile workforce.
But the opposite problem can present its own unique set of problems. Some teams and organizations actually create too much stability.
A workplace that is largely viewed as first-rate means hardly anyone ever leaves or explores greener pastures elsewhere.
While this sounds like a huge advantage — and in many ways it is — a team or organization that is too heavily populated by senior and highly tenured colleagues often creates a leadership nightmare.
To begin with, highly seasoned team members are typically compensated for their tenure and long-standing performance, which can stretch the resources of even the most successful enterprises.
Increasing compensation or benefits for a highly tenured team requires deep pockets and an ever-expanding pie. When resources become limited in a given period, tenured team members often complain loudly and express their frustration, hurting team morale.
Not surprisingly, top-heavy teams normally have little room for advancement, so opportunities for promotion or new roles become limited. Highly experienced team members become stuck in place, doing the same job they did years ago, often with little change.
Seasoned team members often chomp at the bit, impatiently asking for new opportunities and roles that leaders don’t have. Over time, some senior team members who believe they have reached the ceiling become less engaged and express a resistance to any change that doesn’t benefit them.
Rebalancing a team that is too stable is never easy. Any attrition that does occur provides leadership with an opportunity to add more junior or mid-level team members.
Don’t miss this chance.
Encouraging a select group of senior team members to explore opportunities elsewhere is painful but often necessary. Organizing the team into smaller subgroups with more diversity of tenure and seniority can also help to create some balance. But none of these approaches is ideal.
The best path is not to allow a team to become too top-heavy in the first place.
The writing is usually on the wall years ahead of this issue. Continually upgrading talent with more junior colleagues and encouraging select team members to find higher compensation and promotion elsewhere must always be a part of the team strategy.
The benefits of a seasoned group of long-standing colleagues can be enormous, but a lack of diverse seniority can also be troublesome. Great teams are made up of a mix of early-career and later-career team members.
A team that evolves until it is only comprised of highly experienced and tenured team members is both a blessing and a curse.
