The Secret to Keeping Young, Ambitious Talent? Let Them Go.

How does the head of global advertising giant Saatchi &
Saatchi keep top talent? He doesn’t. Actually, he’s
thrilled to have his employees leave the company, go off
and embark upon new adventures.
Kevin Roberts knows that if he gives his employees four
things -- responsibility, learning, recognition, and joy --
they will want to come back. And when they do, they will
return even smarter and more skilled.
“We have had people who have left nine times, but have
come back 10,” says Roberts.
The company employs 6,000 people, and loses about
one-third of them each year, he says. That means,
Saatchi & Saatchi, which works with more than half of
the biggest 50 advertisers in the world , including the
likes of General Mills, Lexus, HSBC, Visa and Toyota,
turns over its entire staff every three years. Just thinking
about that kind of turnover is enough to give most CEOs
a hernia.
But Roberts isn’t most CEOs; in fact he thinks having the
title of CEO is generally useless and silly. He also
doesn’t like the word “employee,” as he sees it as
demeaning and wants every individual to aspire to be a
leader in their role. “You can’t get eagles to fly in
formation,” he says.
When Roberts hires, he looks for curiosity and passion in
equal parts. He doesn’t care if a person comes out of a
poetry major in college or an advertising background. He
wants Saatchi & Saatchi to be a hothouse for ideas, not
a company with rigid hierarchy, strictly enforced rules
and painful HR “nonsense.”
The Saatchi & Saatchi entrepreneurial work environment
is particularly attractive to millennials, who, as a
generation, tend to eschew structure and embrace
independence. It’s likely no surprise then, that the
average age of an employee working for Roberts is 27.
They are “terrific in an amoeba-like, ever changing,
connected, collaborative world,” he says.
Millennials are also used to living their lives through
computers and online. “It is a connected egalitarian
world, more and more, because technology has freed all
of us to compete, to win, to grow, to express ourselves,
to reach our desires,” says Roberts.
Watch this video to hear Roberts talk more about his
counterintuitive non-retention, talent retention strategy.