Many companies lament how hard to it is to find good employees, and that it is even harder to keep them. Employers use a range of tactics, invent unconventional recruitment strategies - like launching viral campaigns in social media, setting up stylish interior designs in the office, buying the trendiest gadgets and furniture, hosting posh parties. Still, people leave.

Let’s sort it out together: why does it happen?

Grand opening of IKEA store in Riga. It would be rather hard to find a single person in Latvia who would not be excited about this occasion. It looked like people split into various groups. There were those who cancelled their trips to Lithuanian store and counted days left until the official megastore opening in Riga. Hundreds of Latvians kept themselves busy with rewriting and rethinking their shopping lists, picking things to buy at local IKEA. There were also those who were getting impressed with the speed of construction and how quickly engineers made the new building “stand” above the city scenery. There very also those, of course, who ‘hated’ it all - the overall quality of the build and cheeky store guidance system that takes you through predefined routes and spits you out at the counter, seconds before you end up with miles long receipt and are guided to the exit.

On your own, you - even you! - will not be able to design or develop this feature, no matter how talented of a professional you are. This requires collective effort, and not just from management - from absolutely everyone. So, where do you start?

Spent two hours in a meeting discussing the outcomes of the last meeting. An hour and a half writing a report on the number of reports in a reporting period. Visited my boss with, as dad would say, a “rationalisation proposal”. My boss promised to discuss it with his boss and find out if it might interest his boss's boss. Just between you, me, and the watercooler, this means either "forget it" or "we'll discuss it, and if Venus leaves the shade of retrograde Mercury, we might approve it in half a year, axing the best bits". What? Did I work on my project? Well, yeah, of course... a bit, during lunch break. Why'd you ask?