Employee retention not what it once was

The recent Press story on teacher retention statistics should have contained an asterisk somewhere. A big, fat asterisk.

*Because millennials are gradually taking over the workforce, many labor truths are becoming fibs.

The front-page article we’re referencing compared teacher retention rates throughout Kootenai County. Coeur d’Alene High School did the best — let’s toss in one of those asterisks here — by retaining 94.3 percent of its teachers last year, up from 90.1 percent the year before. Idaho Department of Education stats show that the average teacher retention rate across the state was 84.5 percent in 2018.

Using the same metrics, Coeur d’Alene Charter Academy — the top high school in all of Idaho based on test scores — isn’t doing such a hot job keeping teachers. Charter’s retention rate slipped from 94.1 percent in 2017 to 85.7 percent last year. Should alarms be sounding there and fireworks erupting above the hallowed halls of CHS? Where’d that pesky asterisk go? And what was it Mark Twain once said?

“There are lies, damned lies and statistics,” the boy from Hannibal wisely noted. And he hadn’t even met a millennial.

By no means are we disparaging the multitudes born between 1980 and 1996, but they operate differently than their predecessors did. The headline of a Gallup workplace business article by Amy Adkins (https://bit.ly/2RvhO6B) gives a big clue: “Millennials: The job-hopping generation,” it says. According to the article and similar stats borne out elsewhere, roughly 6 in 10 millennials are at this very moment open to new job opportunities. Have offer, will travel.

A Gallup study indicated 21 percent of millennials say they changed jobs in one year, more than three times the number of non-millennial job-switchers. So what does it mean, and why is it relevant to teacher retention efforts and results?

In our view, something of a roller-coaster retention ride should be expected not just for schools and teachers, but with most employers who increasingly rely on millennials. Again without passing judgment, what many from that generation value doesn’t necessarily coincide with what, say, many baby boomers value. Higher turnover might say more about individual values than the quality of management, pay rates and so on.

Here’s another thought for anyone who thinks lower retention rates prove something’s rotten in the core product: Some change is not just inevitable, but healthy. How else do you get new ideas and better ways of doing things? Experience is gold, but a constantly evolving workforce might be platinum in a world that’s changing at light speed.