Blocking employee advancement is a lose-lose
proposition. Why you should let your favorite employee move to
another team.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., April 24,
2024 /PRNewswire/ -- New research released from
MIT Sloan Management Review shows that talent
hoarding — manager behaviors that prevent subordinates from
pursuing jobs elsewhere within a company — is bad for
organizations, employees, and managers themselves. "Why You Should
Let Your Favorite Employee Move to Another Team" shares
data-backed evidence that letting their best employees go is often
in managers' own best interests.
"Hoarding talent is a real short-term
mindset with very long-term negative consequences for all..."
Year after year, employees report that the No. 1 reason they
leave an organization is the lack of opportunities for career
advancement. JR Keller, an associate professor of human resource
studies in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at
Cornell University, argues that
"hoarding talent is a real short-term mindset with very long-term
negative consequences for all — managers, employees, and
organizations."
Managers can control this and should keep the following points
in mind when considering their own leadership performance:
- Managers must be willing to give up talent if they wish to
become talent magnets. Earning a reputation as a manager no one
wants to work for will not only minimize a draw on talent but also
limit a manager's own ability to advance.
- Letting people move on is good for organizations and managers.
Employees know which managers are better to work for, and they want
to work for managers who get their people promoted.
- Employees know which managers give out titles without
meaningful responsibility changes. While managers may have real
incentives to hold on to high performers, their reputations as
talent blockers will cost them and their organizations in the long
run.
- Hoarding is costly to organizations. The best way to get
employees to stay is to show them that they can advance their
careers within the organizations.
Of the nearly 100,000 internal applications that Keller and
coauthor Kathryn Dlugos studied,
they found that managers with higher rates of promoting
subordinates received significantly more internal applications when
a spot on their team opened. And even more notably, they received
significantly more applications from top-rated employees.
These effects persisted even when managers themselves changed
jobs. Those who helped their previous subordinates earn promotions
still received more, better, and more functionally diverse
applicants when they first took over a new team. Their reputation
for getting people promoted followed them throughout their
organization and career.
Managers are so important to internal mobility and development,
yet most organizations do not have incentives in place for managers
to develop the talent they have.
"Managers need to be convinced that it is in their own best
interest to develop their people, or they won't ever get the
results they want," concludes Keller. "Managers should think about
the time and energy they spend on providing their subordinates with
development and career advancement opportunities, increasing their
visibility, and helping them make internal connections as an
investment not just in their subordinates' futures but also their
own."
The Research
The authors analyzed 96,712 internal applications submitted to
9,896 open jobs posted by 3,431 hiring managers in the U.S.
operations of a Fortune 50 company over a four-year period. This
data allowed them to calculate the rate at which a manager's
subordinates were promoted, which in turn enabled them to examine
whether managers whose subordinates frequently moved to
higher-level jobs elsewhere in the organization were seen as more
attractive to work for than managers whose subordinates rarely
advanced.
The MIT Sloan Management Review article "Why You Should
Let Your Favorite Employee Move to Another Team" publishes at
8 a.m. ET on April 24, 2024.
About the Authors
JR Keller is an associate professor of human
resource studies in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at
Cornell University. Kathryn Dlugos was formerly an assistant
professor of human resource management at Penn
State University.
About MIT Sloan Management Review
MIT Sloan Management Review is an independent,
research-based magazine and digital platform for business leaders
published at the MIT Sloan School of
Management. MIT SMR explores how leadership and
management are transforming in a disruptive world. We help
thoughtful leaders capture the exciting opportunities — and face
down the challenges — created as technological, societal, and
environmental forces reshape how organizations operate, compete,
and create value.
Connect with MIT Sloan Management Review on:
- Twitter
- LinkedIn
- Facebook
- Instagram
- Threads
- YouTube
CONTACT:
Tess Woods
Tess@TessWoodsPR.com
617-942-0336
View original content to download
multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-research-from-mit-smr-shows-talent-hoarding-is-destructive-for-managers-employees-and-organizations-302123672.html
SOURCE MIT Sloan Management Review