Are internal job fairs the key to employee retention?

As the Great Resignation stretches on, it’s clear that employees are eager to pursue new career opportunities. But what if they knew those opportunities existed within their current company? Would they stay?

Gravie, a health benefits company and marketplace, is betting on it. The Minneapolis-based organization, which currently has 140 employees, has launched what they call internal job fairs, creating dedicated time and opportunities for its workers to learn about other positions and departments within the company — and potentially make a change that will best serve both the employee and the organization.

“Throughout the Great Resignation, it’s been true that some people are choosing to get out of the game,” says Amy Spartz, chief people officer at Gravie. “But what we’re finding is that a lot of people just want to change the game. We’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how to attract people to Gravie, but we also need to make sure that we’re keeping the employees we have in this market.”

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Gravie’s internal job fairs, which launched earlier this year, included different sessions and talks with company leaders and departments that employees could attend either virtually or in-person. Spartz expected 20 employees to participate; roughly 70 did.

Gravie

“Working remote the past two years, it’s easy to lose the pulse on what’s going on,” she says. “This allowed us to bring focus to our company growth and explain what it means for our employee’s career mobility. We broke down all the departments, talked about the jobs that exist and where we’ll be hiring, and gave an overview of the skills and interests that might align with those roles.”

Some employees simply wanted to hear those updates on the company; others were actively interested in pursuing new roles, and Spartz anticipates that the fairs will ultimately lead to about 20 employees landing in different positions or in expanded positions in the early part of 2022.

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Of course, talking to managers about changing jobs is never easy for an employee, even if they’re trying to stay with the company. Spartz says that some workers were unsure about attending the fair, or letting their manager know they were attending. And on the flip side, she and her team worked proactively to clue managers in and encourage them to support their teams.

“Some employees asked if it was ok to tell their manager they wanted to attend, and the answer was an emphatic yes,” she says. “We also pulled all the leaders together and asked them to be open with their employees about the job fair, encourage everyone to go, and attend themselves. It’s really an opportunity to be together and listen and learn and explore.”

Spartz speaks from experience. She started with Gravie working exclusively in HR, and over the course of time took on operations including customer service, health plan administration and account management. But as the work piled up, she realized her skills weren’t being best utilized.

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“I called time-out and just said: this is not where I need to live,” she says. “I need to go back to leading people because the growth plan we have for 2022 will not be well-serviced by me not focusing 100% of my time on people. Plus, operations is not my best use for Gravie — I’m not the best at that. And those conversations are now happening at all levels of the company.”

Spartz anticipates that Gravie will hit 200 staffers by the end of the year, and keeping up with that pace of growth will require both internal and external candidates.

“Our employees are learning about roles they didn’t know existed or didn’t know they were interested in until they attended our fair,” she says. “Giving them that time to learn will help us meet our growth goals.”