The churn logic goes something like this. There are three parties: 1. the raiding company, 2. the raided company and 3. the individual. The raider may be a start up, merged, or expanding company that needs certain skills and is willing to pay a market premium, sometimes a huge premium. The raided company, often the victim, has invested substantial time and resources to train the individual. This company relied on its current trust paradigm to keep the employee. However, something was missing for the Brand U employee. This person has marketable, value adding skills and knowledge. Looking out for #1, the Brand U individual leaves with valuable knowledge and information. Some career fields are churning at 100% turnover a year such as in computer science and information technology.
Whether you’re a manager, supervisor, or a Brand U worker, you’ll become familiar with the concept of ‘churning.’ It may be forced churning such as surgical rightsizing or voluntary churning where you move to a better opportunity. It’s a world where one to ten year veteran workers will leave a job for another one with offers that their present employer can’t offer. For many managers coping with employee churning has become a big part and in some cases the biggest part of their jobs.
Surgical downsizing by trimming people has become a normal course of business for even traditional companies. Even a paternalistic organization like Ford Motor Company trimmed its workforce through a generous buyout program explicitly targeting poor-performing salaried employees or those ‘average/solid employees with limited potential.’ This could be 10% of Ford’s 55,000 white-collar workers. The message that being average or a solid employee is no longer good enough.[ii] What are average or solid employees doing? They’re becoming Brand U’s.
[ii] Schellhardt, Timothy, and Goo, Sara, “At Ford, Buyout Plan Has a Twist,” Wall Street Journal, July 22, 1998, p. B1.