Why you should offer job rotation opportunities to your staff

As a company, are you leveraging mobility to:

* attract more top talent?

* develop and increase the engagement of talent you want to keep?

* retain talent that has a cross functional knowledge of your organization and strengthen your succession planning?

Many feel that rotational assignments (job rotation programming) is a great way to accomplish these things. This could be a particularly potent method for addressing millennial retention as they, in general, express little loyalty to their current employers. According to the 2016 Deloitte Millennial Survey:

"During the next year, if given the choice, one in four Millennials would quit his or her current employer to join a new organization or to do something different. That figure increases to 44 percent when the time frame is expanded to two years. By the end of 2020, two of every three respondents hope to have moved on, while only 16 percent of Millennials see themselves with their current employers a decade from now." 

63% of Millennials said their leadership skills are not being fully developed, and they believe that businesses are not doing enough to bridge the gap to ensure a new generation of business leaders is being created.

Providing developmental opportunities, like rotational assignment programs, causes these percentages to drop. The reality is Millennials want experience. If you provide it, they will stay.

This HRM Asia article states:

"Top performers want to work at firms that help them grow and advance their careers. Role rotation allows organisations to attract and motivate in-demand professionals looking for new challenges or to round out their skill sets in preparation for leadership positions."