Just hiring top talent – a job in itself – is not enough. Retention is paramount and career development is a main component in winning the retention game. That may be easily achievable if you are a Fortune 500 company. However, smaller organizations, including non-profits face a seemingly insurmountable challenge with retention and creating a viable career development program.

Not only is creating a solid career path and succession program a challenge, recent societal cultural changes help compound this issue. According to Millennial expert, Chris Butsch in his upcoming new book, Those Damn Millennials, “There are alternatives to unfulfilling positions or careers, and Millennials know it; it’s become easier than ever to build our own boats.” So, a generation that makes up 53.5 million people in the workforce couldn’t care less about your prestige positions or gold watches; and you can kiss company loyalty goodbye. Further complicating retention issues for small businesses is, of course, the lack of resources that just require dipping into deep pockets for a larger organization. So here are some ideas that can help.

Any of these three topics might fill volumes of books. Indeed, there are volumes of information about all of them today, especially finding good talent. Technology is part of the problem and part of the solution. According to several sources, America is one of the leading countries in the advancement of technology. Microsoft suggests that the United Kingdom leads the way in how schools use technology. Technology, without the talent to use it, is useless. Therefore, if education is not keeping up, there may be a lag in finding that talent. In addition, even though technology has certainly been around for a while, a number of older Americans are not keeping up with technology. That can put a dent in the talent pool. Another issue is the fact that younger people have no loyalty to one company and the talent pool becomes unsustainable. How can technology be the culprit but also the solution?

Life is like attending school every day. In other words, while living both our professional and personal lives, we learn continuously. Yes, there are extremes at both ends of the learning spectrum. There are those so busy learning new theories that they forget to learn the common sense lessons in life, like how to come in out of the rain. Then there are those who think they already know everything and refuse to learn anything new. As with everything, there needs to be balance. Businesses can create learning cultures with balance for both the employee and the organization. How and why do they do that?