Writer: Eleana Teran
3 min read September 2023 — Known as a global education hub, Boston’s key challenge is keeping students in the local workforce once their tassels turn.
A recent Bankrate study highlighted its top cities in the country to start a career, with U.S. southern cities making up a majority. The study, which focused on three broad areas including affordability, employment opportunities and quality of life, placed Boston as No. 12 among the Top 50 metro areas — and the highest ranking among Northeastern cities.
According to the Massachusetts Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development, the state recorded an unemployment rate of 2.5% in July 2023, below the national rate of 3.7%, and added 12,500 new jobs across the Commonwealth. Life sciences has continued to be a bright spot for Boston and the state, with MassBio reporting year-over-year employment growth of 8.5% in biopharma research and development in their newly released 2023 Industry Snapshot.
However, the higher rental costs, long commutes and industry-specific opportunities can prompt young professionals to look elsewhere for work, a trend that has continued in the post-pandemic world. Invest: spoke with leaders across the region to gather their strategies to attract and retain top talent as well as learn what makes Boston a great place to do business and experience career growth.
Alice Benson, CEO, Benson Executive Search
There’s a contradiction in the perception of today’s talent market. While there has been some slowdown in hiring, the national unemployment rate stands at 3.6%, which is considered beyond full employment. And this number persists. There’s a disconnect between the perception of readily available talent and the actual reality. I recently spoke with a leader for a fast-growing biotech, which assumed, based on the headlines, that there’s an abundance of good talent available, but at the same time, this leader said, “Every candidate we’re considering hiring has multiple offers.”This disconnect between perception and reality is interesting. Even with employees changing jobs less quickly than during the Great Resignation, it’s requiring companies to continue to focus on employee retention, which is a complex issue, first developing a deep understanding of why people leave and then build and execute retention strategies to encourage employees to stay and thrive.
As an example, a recent trend that’s gaining traction is internal mobility, where companies focus on providing career paths for employees to encourage them to stay. It goes beyond enriching their current roles. For example, if someone joins a company as a product manager but expresses an interest in marketing communications, the company should support and facilitate her transition. This involves building the necessary infrastructure and leveraging technologies in a new way so the employee and manager can help them develop the necessary skills to move into marketing. Another example of an effective retention strategy is the shift from virtual happy hours to a more strategic approach centered around developing effective managers, given the nuanced skills of leading virtually.
Meredith Harris, Executive Director, Marlborough Economic Development Corporation
The key here is access. We have excellent infrastructure, abundant talent and easy access to highways — practically everything businesses need. Being centrally located in Massachusetts, you truly can get anywhere from here. With the turnpike, 495 and 290 nearby, we have great connectivity to other parts of the Commonwealth, and neighboring states, which significantly helps with talent acquisition and employee retention.
Ensuring a steady pipeline of talent is vital, as companies are more likely to stay and thrive in a community where they can find skilled employees. Therefore, we focus heavily on helping companies locate the right talent to support their growth and operations.
We take pride in being accessible and always ready to engage in problem-solving and brainstorming sessions. Before businesses consider leaving, we want to be given the chance to help solve any problems they may face.
Scott Morrison General Manager, Cigna Healthcare New England
We acknowledge that our employees fuel everything we do and reaching our goals, internally and externally, are dependent on them. We’ve always taken an employee-centric approach and continue efforts to build and reinforce an environment that’s open to meaningful dialogue and an understanding in a safe environment. We strongly believe that people want to feel like they belong. If that’s the feeling, then they’ll be more engaged, satisfied and productive. Part of our approach is looking to be a business partner with clients, not just their health plan. We focus on creating a healthy workforce because that equals a healthy business. We know that if employees are suffering from a variety of things, then it has a real business cost. What sets us apart from our competition is that we help to create a culture of wellness within our client companies. They’ll ultimately have the highest performing, most engaged employees, which helps their business. We’ve also had a program where we work with different universities across the country to recruit individuals into Cigna. We also participate in career fairs and we’ll continue to do that. We’re looking to open opportunities for all.
JD Chesloff, President & CEO, Massachusetts Business Roundtable
The top concern by far is the inability to find talent. It spans across industries and is in every corner of the Commonwealth. The broad umbrella is a competitiveness conversation and that is what we are focused on. This includes addressing the cost of living, housing, and costs of doing business and addressing the outmigration of talent. We are finding that more and more employers are hiring out of state to work remotely because it is increasingly difficult to find talent here.
The Roundtable has an agenda around this topic that is broken into three buckets of solutions. The first bucket is around recruiting and retaining talent and that addresses issues around housing production, transportation infrastructure, childcare costs, broadband access and tax policy that would attract people here. The second bucket is around talent development and thinking strategically about how we align that state’s workforce development system with in-demand jobs and employers. The third bucket is around talent diversity and that is an intentional focus on diversifying the pipeline and tapping into untapped talent pools.
Christina Mahady, Principal, AKF Group
We have implemented various strategies to retain its current workforce while also attracting qualified candidates. We believe in effective communication within the firm. Managers regularly connect with staff to discuss workload, mental health, and expectations. We value our employees and prioritize staff retention. Rather than have employees seek employment at a competitor, we prefer to have upfront conversations. We believe it is crucial to have an open-door policy for communication to address any concerns or issues before it’s too late.
We encourage diversity and inclusion regardless of gender, race, or background. An integral part of our recruitment campaign is to foster partnerships with high schools and universities to promote engineering as a viable and exciting career choice for women, helping to create a pipeline of talented and diverse engineers. Once diverse talent is hired, we work to retain these employees by providing opportunities for career growth, mentorship, and a supportive work environment. In the Boston office, half of our leadership is currently female. Fifty percent of the most recent class of Partners and forty percent of the 2022 elected Principals at AKF were females. With the long hours and tight deadlines, women in engineering often face unique challenges and barriers that can make it difficult to advance their careers. AKF has implemented mentorship and leadership opportunities to develop the skills and talents of female employees, helping them to succeed.
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