In 1984, I graduated from college with a degree in accounting and went to work for Elliott Davis, an accounting, consulting and tax firm founded in 1920 and headquartered in Greenville, South Carolina.
I am one of those rare breed of workers: after 40 years, I still work for Elliot Davis. I stayed with the first company that hired me straight out of college.
It's now axiomatic that to advance in your career, you have to leave and re-leave the companies that employed you. This is often to the individual's advantage. Having many companies on your resume means you've gained knowledge of different systems, processes and skills. You've embraced the cultures of different organizations and, hopefully, learned from them all.
That's true to some extent.
But there is truth on the other end of the spectrum. There is also weight in staying with the same company, putting down roots, and enduring years of change. I think we've been too biased in the past few decades to the idea of ”leaving your job to advance your career.” At the very least, you can offer your employees the vision of staying and advancing. To do that, you need to build a business that gives employees longevity and stability, as well as innovation and ambition, to build their careers in one place.
There's no question that longevity for people within an organization is a great gift. A quick look at almost any team sports story will touch on the value of long-term continuity in players staying with their team and growing and changing with it. Tim Duncan spent his entire 19-year NBA career with the same team, the San Antonio Spurs. So did the late Kobe Bryant, who spent 20 years with the Lakers.
Interestingly, team names are just as iconic as the names of their players. Tom Brady and the Patriots. Larry Bird and the Celtics. Jackie Robinson and the Brooklyn Dodgers. While these teams maintained an impressive continuity of star players, they also built entire team names and traditions. Teams became known for a particular culture. It was reasonable to say “Lakers culture” or “Patriots culture,” and sports fans knew what that culture meant.
What elicits that kind of loyalty from top talent? How do you build a company that attracts lasting talent and team continuity?
Elliott Davis has changed dramatically since I joined the firm in 1984. The firm has grown to become one of the largest law firms in the Southeast with over 800 employees in nine offices throughout the Southeast. Looking back at my first few years with the firm, I realize that I was happy with my opportunity from the beginning. I knew from the moment I joined that I would remain with the firm. Staying with Elliott Davis was an easy, simple and clear choice for me.
As a CEO today, I know the talent challenge all too well. Leaders of companies of all sizes and in every industry spend enormous time and energy finding talented people who embody similar values and great character, but every treasure we find means we have to work even harder to retain them. Today, in 2024, every CEO is grappling with talent challenges in ways they've never faced before. Some industries, especially retail, manufacturing, and food service, have been hit harder than others.
What have I learned as a CEO about retaining great talent? But why did I choose to stay, from when I first graduated to today, and why was it such a simple and obvious choice for me?
Below are five principles I’ve picked up over the years from my experience “retaining” at Elliott Davis and from identifying and retaining top talent for the past 20 years: These are principles we try to embed into our identity at Elliott Davis, and I think they can help improve retention in any industry or company, whether it’s at the lowest or very highest levels.
1. “Good people make good places.” – Anna Sewell, author
Retention begins with recruitment: A great company and its culture starts with recruiting the right people and then retaining them.
No matter what challenges, adverse circumstances, or market or economic difficulties a company faces, if management can find and attract the best talent, the problems can be solved and the challenges can be met.
People join other people.
When you bring great people together under one roof, other people will join in. When you bring talent together, you get a snowball effect where talent attracts talent and culture attracts culture creators.
Moreover, retaining talent often has to do with the other people here. What holds us together are the people we enjoy being around, the people we appreciate. Through our talent, we form a cohesive team that works towards a common goal.
One of the main reasons I stayed at Elliott Davis was purely because I enjoyed it. And the main reason I enjoyed it was because of the people I surrounded myself with. Good people make a good place to work, and we know that if we do that one thing right at Elliott Davis, we'll win the talent retention game.
2. “Gratitude is a good thing; it makes you appreciate the good in others.” – Voltaire, author, philosopher, poet
Now more than ever, we are more appreciative of our employees. And we are thoughtful. ambitious For our people. We want our people to build their futures here. We want to help them discover and build their futures, not just a place for them to work. The passion to help shape the future is a very intentional commitment from our core leaders.
Of course, we have many employees who come from other places, and they have positive things to say about our culture. They are treated as individuals, not as cogs in a big bureaucracy. “This place is different,” they say.
Note that this principle builds on the first: When top talent works together, new talent knows how to advance, recognizes and leverages potential mentors, and mentors their replacements.
3. “Knowledge speaks, wisdom listens.” – Jimi Hendrix, musician
We believe that to understand what it takes to be successful, you need input from everyone, and getting that input is very hard. Getting broad communication takes time, energy, and commitment. This is often seen as a waste of time, but it's not.
We encourage people to feel comfortable sharing their opinions. We let people know there's no risk in sharing. We listen. We also try to have more group discussions than we used to, so we bring people together and ask for their feedback. And that feedback has to come from all levels within the company.
We ask office leaders to solicit input from focus groups on specific topics to solicit further feedback, and these groups should be broadly drawn, not just the same one or two people.
4. “The best way to pierce the cloudy veil of thinking created by maintaining the status quo is to relentlessly ask ‘why’. Ask often.” – Shigeo Shingo, Japanese engineer
Good companies accept that they're not perfect. They accept that there will be turnover, but hopefully they'll have less turnover than other companies. In general, we want people who leave to do what's right for them. they. They leave because there is an opportunity they want to pursue.
But accepting the reality of turnover doesn't mean we should take talented people leaving lightly. There's a difference between people leaving for an opportunity and people leaving because of a bad situation that we somehow created. We try not to make mistakes that would cost us great people.
So, if a company loses an employee because of a situation they created, leaders need to first acknowledge that it happened and then say, “Let's do better.” Ask yourself how you can learn from the departure, admit your mistake, learn and work to prevent it from happening again.
Even if you have created the most favorable environment for someone to showcase their talents and work in your company, you must also accept that top talent is in high demand and is constantly sought after. In today's world, more than ever before, top talent from any organization is regularly recruited by other companies. The fact that they are the best talent for your company is evidenced by other companies wanting to hire them and include them in their own teams.
5. “The past is never dead. It's not even the past.” – William Faulkner, author
It's important to have longtimers tell our story. At Elliott Davis, our “old timers” tell the story of how we've been successful through different eras. They support and recognize the need for change. They see change as a friend, not an enemy. But they also value tradition. And the truth is, tradition and history are deeply ingrained in the fabric of an organization. We have to acknowledge that history and recognize that it's part of our corporate identity.
Listening to senior people who have been with the company for a longer period of time gives us trust and confidence. Yes, we're not who we used to be, but they can point out our heritage, connect the past to the present, and show us how many challenges we've overcome in the past — and how we can do it again.
Being with them gives me even more confidence that change is on our side, because they have seen it and weathered the turmoil to get to where we are now. Give Witness To our victory as veterans who have seen the battle.
Broadly speaking, we believe that if we put effort into attracting great people, appreciating and listening to them, asking the right questions to improve, and listening to the people who work alongside us on the front lines, we will retain a great team. We believe that great people will stay with us because we have painstakingly and purposefully built a great place, a place people want to be.
Note that none of this is possible without getting principle #1 right: If you bring together great people working together, you can achieve great things over a very long period of time — 40 years in some cases, even longer in some cases.
And remember that some people realize early in their careers that where they started isn't what they want. We've seen that with new hires at Elliott Davis. Often they work in one place for a few years, realize what they want, find a great job somewhere else, and end up staying there for the rest of their career.
What if every company focused on creating a place where the majority of people who worked there still wanted to be there 40 or 50 years from now? The business growth, success, joy and friendships we've experienced would be truly revolutionary.
Because that's what it will be.
