Quick Win: The surprising upside of shorter tenure

Long tenure sounds like a good thing - until it starts holding your business back. Here’s what I learned when I stopped treating it as a badge of honour.

In this Quick Win, I’m joined again by clinical psychologist Sabina Read to unpack the hidden downside of long staff tenure. I share how high tenure at Inventium was quietly stalling innovation, what finally shifted my thinking, and why I now see shorter tenure as a healthy sign of growth. 

Sabina and I discuss: 

• The hidden shadow side of long tenure 

• Why fresh thinking often gets ignored by legacy voices 

• How old experiences can kill new ideas before they start 

• Why newer team members often bring better solutions 

• A mindset shift that helped me reframe turnover 

Key Quote 
“If it’s happening at Inventium, where we talk about innovation every day, it can happen anywhere.” 

Listen to the full episode with Sabina here. 

Connect with Sabina via her website, Instagram, or check out her podcast Human Cogs. 

My latest book The Health Habit is out now. You can order a copy here: 
https://www.amantha.com/the-health-habit/ 

Connect with me on the socials: 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanthaimber 
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amanthai 

If you are looking for more tips to improve the way you work and live, I write a weekly newsletter where I share practical and simple to apply tips to improve your life. You can sign up for that at https://amantha-imber.ck.page/subscribe 

Visit https://www.amantha.com/podcast for full show notes from all episodes. 

Get in touch at [e-mail] 

Credits: 
Host: Amantha Imber 
Sound Engineer: The Podcast Butler 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The average staff tenure in my business Inventium has dropped,
and I am.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Rapped about that.

Speaker 1 (00:08):
That might sound strange to here, right, because surely we'll
want people to stay with the company for a long
time so they can grow and become more efficient and
better understand the workings of the organization. This is another
lesson that I learned from my biggest leadership mistakes. In
twenty twenty four, something I unpacked with my friend Sabina Read,
a clinical psychologist and expert in human behavior, and it

(00:31):
turns out from a psychological perspective, Sabina also sees lots
of reasons why short a tenure for employees can actually
be a good thing.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
Welcome to How I Work, a show about habits, rituals,
and strategies for optimizing your day. I'm your host, doctor
Amantha Imber.

Speaker 3 (01:00):
You've talked about how you've had employees there for a
long time and tenure average tenure is very is long
compared to other organizations, which is a credit to invent Him.
But with tenure can become well. You tell me, what
do you think long tenure? What are the risks of
tenure for people in an organization and culture.

Speaker 2 (01:20):
Like tenure obviously has a whole host of benefits, and
I won't go into those because I think that they're
well trodden and everyone knows what they are. But tenure
also has a shadowside, and I feel like I really
experience that. In twenty twenty four, where we had very
high tenure, a ten year is actually dropped and I'm

(01:41):
quite happy about that, which might sound strange, but I
feel like the thinking is a lot fresher because of it.
What I found happening, and this was not across the board,
but on occasion, you know, I'd be talking to someone
who'd worked in the business for many, many years, and
I think I've noticed this for a good couple of years,
Like in twenty twenty three was probably when I first

(02:03):
began to be hyper aware of it, and it just
kind of continued into twenty twenty four. Is that as
someone and sometimes that someone would be me, like I
have a friend who yeah, so I would notice that
sometimes I would bring up an idea or a thought
like I think we should do this, and I would

(02:26):
be met with resistance from, you know, someone that had
been with the business for years and they'd seen all
the the whole journey that we've been on, you know,
over the last decade, and they would use an experience
from years ago or data from years ago to go, well,
that's not going to work because we tried it then
and it didn't work. And ironically, you know, a large
part of what we do in Inventium is innovation consulting

(02:49):
and capability building, and it's exactly what we teach our
clients not to fall into the trap of that. We
tried it last year and it didn't work, And it
was quite scary for me to realize that that was
happening within Inventium. Again, not across the board, but there
were just quite a few instances where I had been
experiencing it and it was happening for a couple of years.

(03:11):
And as I say, it's the shadow side of tenure
that is really I mean, like God, if it's happening
at Inventium, where we're talking about innovation every day, I mean,
it can happen everywhere, and it is so detrimental to
growth and improvements and new things happening.

Speaker 3 (03:30):
And I've seen this at countless organizations and coach different
individuals who are newer so not the longer tenured people
who say, I thought I was brought on board here
to bring fresh insights and new perspectives, but whenever I
raise them, everyone says, no, that's not how we do it,
or that hasn't worked before. And it's also we're talking
about tenure, you and I. But I also would use

(03:51):
the word legacy. Sometimes long term employees are so attached
to the legacy or a brand of what used to
be in the heyday, they can't let go of that,
and they do a disservice to the new voices and
the new ideas that come to the point where the
new ideas and the new voices feel unheard or undervalued

(04:13):
or they never said that. The dial shift on their
thoughts or their contribution, and they leave. And so then
you end up sitting with the same tenured crew sort
of stirring in the same pot, and you're not going
to get not just innovation, but you're not going to
get any shift towards change or growth or new ways
of being or doing things. So I think we have

(04:35):
to be careful when new people come on board. And
another parallel, I always like to think outside. You know,
here's another therapy example. One of the things that we
know about research in the best therapists I'm talking about
set of clinical psychological settings is not. Of course, rapport
is the number one is the number one efficacy factor
in therapy, but how long a therapist has trained for

(04:58):
it actually doesn't have a huge bearing always on the outcomes.
And sometimes newer therapists are open and curious and they
want to try new things, and that can bring fresh
perspectives for the client as well. And I think that's
the same in business. So again, with regards to age
or even experience, a new, fresh, bright employee might have

(05:23):
ideas that no one's ever thought about before, and when
they speak up, everyone's like, well, you know, she's sort
of the junior or the grad or what would she
or he? No, let's not judge someone by how long
they've worked a in the organization or even b full stop.

Speaker 1 (05:39):
I hope you enjoyed this quick win with Savina. If
you'd like to listen to the full discussion, you can
find a link to that in the show notes.

Speaker 2 (05:46):
If you like today's show, make sure you gud follow
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How I Work was recorded on the traditional land of
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