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Retention Strategies 8

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swearingen

Civil/Environmental
Feb 15, 2006
663
The many local firms in two neighboring cities near where I work are battling over a seemingly fixed set of resources. People are jumping ship every month to 3 months because the firm next door flashes more money. It's getting really crazy and job continuity has gone out of the window.

Any ideas for retention strategies? What do your companies use?
 
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ScottyUK,

Allow me to clarify. If my current employer paid me more than I can get elsewhere, in an environment that is better than I can get elsewhere, etc.....

I did not mean "matching an offer" after the fact.

"Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater."
Albert Einstein
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There will always be disgruntled people; no matter what is done for them they’ll never be happy. I had one boss who would call some “a quarter man”, meaning that he would quit a job if he could get $0.25 an hour more somewhere else.

I think one problem is that virtually all workers have become commodities; yet workers have always been commodities. Unfortunately, this condition has become more visible in recent years. Where I work, we hear the corporate spiel about integrity, teamwork, etc but we all know that to keep our jobs we have to meet the utilization goal or we’re gone.

A company should truly value its employees because of their inherent dignity and employees should value their employer because work has and provides dignity, but those days are gone.

“1) If they can afford to pay me the better rate, why have I had to hold a loaded gun to their head in order to get it?” Managers sometimes lose sight of someone’s value (the only time I changed jobs solely for money was 1986; got a $6,700 raise; and 2 ½ years later my former employer asked me to come back, which I did because I loved working there) but sometimes employees have over inflated ideas of their value. I remember reading somewhere that a salary represents what one can do not what one has done. This is why it is important for managers to have frank discussions with their staff. Some of the younger engineers here (unknowingly) limit themselves because they see some work as beneath them or unworthy of their perceived talents.

Enough rambling, gotta keep my utilization up.
 
Very interesting thread, thank you swearingen for starting the ball rolling............

It's obvious from the postings that there are a variety of opinions on employee loyalty.

In the old days (I have been told) there was an unwritten contract between employees and employers - work hard - get paid (+ advancement) and both stick together through thick and thin.

Today's employment environment is quite different. As we all know it's no longer: for better or worse, more like: for better and then forget it. The myopic focus on today's momentary bottom line has taken away the long range thinkers. This has been successful for companies: proof record Wall Street numbers, but it does present difficulties in attracting and retaining talented staff.

I have skipped around a little and never once was I asked, during my exit interview, why did you start to look elsewhere.....

The HR focus has never been proactive. Rarely have I seen an HR person experienced in a technical business.

In the past, I've been able to keep good people around me be continueing to see that their busy, happy with their assignments and able to fully utilize all the company benefits.

While this may not work for all, it did work for me.

jjf1

 
Let me pose a question to all of this: Do you think IT has contributed a lot to people's ability to job shop and their propensity to jump ship so to speak? I'm a younger guy who's pretty comfortable with IT. When I took my current job, I moved halfway across the US. My resume was pulled by a headhunter at another corner of the country. Had I not had access to the internet and a variety of venues to look through, I don't know that I would have easily landed the job that I did, at least not in the time I did (I was on the market for a week or so). Next, let's consider salaries and the like. We've seen sites posted on this board that link salaries to different careers, salaries to different areas, etc. For you older guys, when you didn't know that somebody in a similar position in another state was making say, $10K more per year, were you more likely to be satisfied with the status quo? In other words, has information accessibility helped to contribute to your dissatisfaction with a current or prior position? I look at people like my father who grew up in a city and never left to live anywhere else. They took a job, maybe switched once, but generally were either content or coped. Thus employment was much steadier and the concept of "the little things" never needed to be a consideration; there was always someone waiting in the eaves to jump in.

I look at my current position in life and realize that I have it better than a lot of folks out there do. But I can't help but read about other fields and other areas and wonder how often in my career I'll be moving from one state (or country) to the next in search of a higher salary.

 
This was said by TripleZ

"But what helps us draw people is the work environment we encourage. If most of your line folks are happy and upbeat, it does make the day go quicker."

What I get from that is it is important to hire people that fit into the current work atmosphere. Perhaps it is hard to keep people because people are being hired that should never bave been selected in the first place.

I can think of a similar situation where I am now. We were considering a new guy that was not popular here while on internship, especially with me. If he was hired, I probably would have left soon after and he would not have fit in and may have left soon after. So a year after hiring him we'd be searching for two new people.

Very intersting thread though, nice to see different perspectives....
 
My last employer gave me a huge retention bonus to keep me there for another year. I was basically doing work for 3 people, engineer/designer/IT.
After the year, they decided not to do retentions anymore and I had not had a raise in 4 years. I was commuting long distance to work through heavy traffic.
I asked for a raise and promotion. They wanted me there to continue doing what I was doing and maybe a change in title in a year.
I moved on a few months later to my current IT job (from mech engineering): more $$, closer to home, less stress.
If they were to give me another retention, I probably would have stayed ... not sure. IMO, The savings in gas and stress outweighed the retention bonus.
I spend more time with the family, make more $$ (plus gas savings), better benefits, less stress.
my 2 cents.

Chris
Systems Analyst, I.S.
SolidWorks 06 4.1/PDMWorks 06
AutoCAD 06
ctopher's home (updated 06-21-06)
 
TripleZ - good point. Remember the old quote from Sir Francis Bacon - Knowledge is Power. The internet has given us a great tool which has unleashed decades of knowledge.

Like many above has stated company/worker loyalty is at an all time low in corporate America (IMO). Their was a time companies offered a retirement plan that would take care of a worker after they invested 30+ years to the company. Now these corporations (Lockheed Martin, HP, <insert name>) have dissolved these in the name of stake holder porfits. I know all the bean counters will spout out but we created 401Ks so you have more control over your retirement....not the same thing. So now the worker has to maximize their salary but "job shopping" or "headhunting" for higher wages.
 
I suppose that in a rational world these non financial strategies would be employed if they were more cost effective than simply paying higher wages (or whatever).

I'd like to see the true cost of these non-financial strategies - lost opportunity time, cost of HR, etc etc.

For instance, once every 3 months I drive up to head office and we spend the day doing silly socially relevant things (teamwork exercises and the like, and then we go to a pub for lunch). So that's hmm, 32 hours times 200 bucks an hour, 6400 bucks a year that they have forgone in order for me to say hello to the one or two people I don't usually see. I haven't had that big a pay rise in a while.

Cheers

Greg Locock

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.
 
This is turning out to be a very interesting thread.

I really like jjf1's comment about HR being proactive. One problem, though, is I find people will very rarely say they're leaving for money, even though in many cases you know for sure they are. If you press the question, they can't come clean because they already gave their other excuses...

I also think triplez's IT-related response was interesting. I can see how it has allowed people more job choices and firms more candidate choices (just like Ebay has given you all the world's garage sales instead of just the ones in your town), but I'm not sure it's really affected my situation, other than being able to bring in folks from out of state.

One endemic problem is that it's a specialty business and the local firms in the two cities are fighting over the folks that already know the business. These folks are worth more (initially) because they can be productive almost immediately. Our schedules are tight, margins are slim (usually 1.7 to 2.5) and productivity is paramount.

Get this - I found out this week that we are training one of the copy room clerks and an IT guy on AutoCAD!! Can you believe that? Granted, these two happen to be pretty sharp guys, but I just thought it was funny that we're dipping into overhead staff to pull some slack doing drawing pickups!! I'm trying to tell you - it's crazy here...

I also found out today that we've hired a new engineer and drafter. The engineer is from Israel and the designer is from an architectural firm - a CAD whiz, but will be quite shaky on what we do.

We lost another engineer this week - a 15 to 20 year guy that's getting a stiff bump in pay (again) to go back to the company he came from 6 months ago. The kicker? He spent three months before here at yet another company!!

Call me old school, or just stupid, but my Dad worked for the same company for 33 years and they did him right. I know those days are long gone, but 3 companies in 6 months? I just can't do it - even for a big chunk of cash.
 
Swearingin, do you think that 15-20 year guy had some idea that he would end up back at the original company with probably a lot more pay? As long as you're not moving and interrupting your family, switching companies every few months wouldn't really be that big of deal, especially if they are all in the same industry. Maybe your company should relocate so it's not so easy for employees to job-hop??

I didn't mention in my previous post something very interesting I found while researching my paper. Multiple job satisfaction surveys showed that those who are the most satisfied with their job are SLIGHTLY overworked and/or slightly underpaid. The thinking being that you feel like you are earning your pay and that contributes to job satisfaction. It sounds strange but I know that I do feel better after a day when I've solved problems and helped others.
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This is a little off-topic but someone above mentioned the old addage knowledge is power. Some of you have seen this proof but I like it so I'll repeat it.

Everybody knows that Knowledge = Power, Time = Money and that Power = Work/Time.

Now if we substitute our equations,
Knowledge = Work/Money OR Money = Work/Knowledge

From this new equation, we can deduce a few things:
1. If work is held equal, the more money you make, the less knowledgable you are
2. If work is held equal, the more knowledge you have, the less money you make.
3. If money is held equal, the more knowledge you gain, the harder you have to work
 
On the question of IT affecting the job situation- My perception is that it has made it tremendously easier to shop for jobs all over the country. The downside is that you have to compete with all those people. I once found myself in a situation where I figured I was probably the most qualified person in the state for a particular job, but couldn't even get an interview for it- they probably had 100 resumes from all over the country. If you want to change states everytime you change jobs, that's fine. If you'd like to stay put, it's a bit rough.

Some people are just natural job hoppers, but some of us just really don't like to change jobs, especially if it involves moving as well (especially with kids in school, a social life, etc.)

"and the local firms in the two cities are fighting over the folks that already know the business."- that's the problem I alluded to above- they're using a very short-sighted approach rather than bringing new people in.

Seems like I remember seeing a Dilbert comic sometime back where the boss bemoaned the lack of loyalty and asked what had become of all the loyal employees- and was reminded that they had all been laid off sometime back.
 
It's not only in US that happens this situation. This is the classical economic problem of supply-demand.

Some time ago I read an article in a magazine that was titled something like :"Job hopping, the new hobby for young Chinese" and it said that every year in Shanghai area, 1 million persons switch jobs.
Amazing!
 
How about giving them additional paid leave. In the UK it is fairly common for companies to offer an additional day of paid leave per day of service, up to a maximum of 5 days. If they have been there for 5 years and jump ship, then they lose a weeks leave.

As a salary earner they still have to get the same work done regardless of the leave, so it should not make that much difference to productivity.

They will come to get used to this additional leave and wont want to lose it.
 
I know I'd stay for a day off for every day worked![thumbsup2]
 
The additional paid leave assumes (a) They are there long enough to earn it (and not let go shortly before it comes into effect) and (b) They are actually allowed to use the time. Both are iffy on occasion.
 
As a manager/owner/boss, one way to reduce employee turn-over rate is not to harbor golden children or "untouchables".

Promotion/rewards based on performance improves morale. Giving companywide equal percentage distribution of bonuses/raises usually results in better performers to look the other way.

Being "fair" is the most important and most difficult. Once employees are convinced company is fair to them, they usually stay.

Lastly, turn-over is inevitable in any organization. Key is to retain the good performers that you can afford.
 
I happen to run into a engineer I used to work with this weekend and she was telling me how there company operated.

It was a 15% pay cut where salary was concerned to take her new position, but in return she got an extra week off. The big thing was though if her department met there goals for output, sales and safety they got huge bonuses. Also if the company as a whole made there goals then they got another round of huge bonuses. The bonuses made up for more than any salary she was likely to see otherwise.

The interesting thing about this was it really created a team effort throughout the company. She was telling me that if her unit went down for whatever reason, It was not uncommon for other managers to send her people to help get it back online as quickly as possible and vice versa for her. Also they quite often would brain storm with other departments to help make everybody more effective and efficienct. The thing that really suprised me though was there was a lot of cross functional sales going on.
If somebody could justify they needed a piece of equipment or a person, all of the managers usually jumped on board with it pretty quickly because they knew if would be benifiting the company as a whole. It was also not uncommon for departments to share people. Another thing was they got rid of all of the inner company profit centers, i.e. where one department charges another department for work done.

This really suprised me coming from a company where departments are always bickering and putting each other down. We are constantly having people leave because they can't work with this person or that person.

In theory it really seems like a clever idea to retaining people. I guess to make this work though you have to have reasonable goals.

Zuccus
 
The interesting thing about this was it really created a team effort throughout the company.

But what about if the company went through a couple of nonprofitable years and people that "banked" on that bonus started to complain. I once took a job based on those these items....HR really painted a rosey picture but didn't tell me they had not given a bonus in a couple of years. Lucky for me, my boss made it right during my review.

You can please some of the people some of the time, but you can't please all of the people all of the time -- Abraham Lincoln
 
Heckler,

Agreed, the only thing she didn't like was the fact alot of her income was based on sales efforts by people she have never and would never meet. Although the company has been doing very well for the couple of years that she has been there. So she hasn't experienced the down turn yet.

Zuccus
 
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