What Is The One Surprising Secret Of Retaining Great Employees?

I graduated from college with a Bachelor’s degree in Business and took a job as a management trainee at a fancy department store. It wasn’t long before I was offered a position as a department manager and I eagerly accepted the promotion even though I sensed early on that retail was not a career I wanted to pursue long-term.

Why did I accept the position if I knew I didn’t plan to stay? The answer is simple: it gave me the experience of managing people and large inventories, which I knew would look good on my resume when I packed my desk and moved on.

I suspect that I’m like many people who use their first and second job as a stepping stone to something bigger; and, hopefully, better. The department store put a lot of money into how it trained and groomed me for the professional world, but I left it behind as soon as I found something better.

My discontent with the world of retail was hard to articulate, but I knew deep down that something integral and essential was missing for me. I discovered the missing piece when I became an FBI agent because it was a job that provided me with the meaning and fulfillment that had been missing in my first job.

There are hundreds of articles on why people leave their jobs, followed by a tidal wave of ways leaders can change…