Profiles Asia Pacific, Inc.

In a web article by Gregory P. Smith employees quit for many reasons but, in general, there are five important areas that motivate people to leave their jobs.

5 P’s

1. Poor match between the person and the job
2. Poor fit with the organizational climate and culture
3. Poor alignment between pay and performance
4. Poor connections between the individual, their coworkers, and the supervisor
5. Poor opportunities for growth and advancement

Smith wrote:

As you know, it is getting difficult to attract and keep skilled employees. Many businesses and industries are desperate for help and can’t find good people with the right skills and attitudes.

While many leading companies place more effort in employee retention, most are clueless. They accept employee turnover as a normal part of doing business. High turnover organizations spend disproportionate amounts of resources on recruiting and replacing their workforce, while smart organizations invest in employee retention. Yes, there is going to be turnover no matter what you do, but blindly ignoring the reasons for turnover is foolish and expensive.

The five P’s can be addressed successfully. Employee retention begins by paying attention to what causes low job satisfaction as well as what attracts, retains, and motivates your workforce.

Here are a few items to consider:
Identify and weed out poor managers. The relationship with the employee’s front-line manager is the most common reason people leave. La Rosa’s is a large restaurant business with over 3000 employees. As part of their employee retention strategy, all employees evaluate their bosses twice a year using a special report card. It asks the employees to give their managers a letter grade from A to D in four categories. Any score less than a “B” requires a specific comment from the employee. After it’s completed, they tabulate the comments and design action plans for improvement.

Hold managers accountable for turnover. Set specific responsibilities for Human Resources, supervisors, and executives on what their specific role is in employee retention. Train managers so they understand what leads to higher retention and greater job satisfaction. Hold managers responsible for retention in their departments, set turnover goals for each manager, and track accordingly. Promote managers whose behavior is consistent with the organization’s values and philosophies.

Create a positive work environment. Money and benefits may bring employees through the front door, but poor work conditions drive them out the back. In its National Study of the Changing Workforce, the Families and Work Institute showed earnings and benefits have only a 3 percent impact on job satisfaction. “Job quality” and “workplace support” have a combined 70 percent.

Develop an “Onboarding” program for the first 90 days on the job. Don’t hire and abandon your new employees. Insure they get the support, training, and assistance they need. Quint Studer, CEO of the Studer Group, a consulting firm in Gulf Breeze, Florida, finds companies that take steps to “re-recruit” new employees can improve performance and reduce turnover in their first three months by as much as 66 percent.

Enhance connections between co-workers, managers, and the organization. To build stronger bonds between the top management and employees, one corporate office practices something called Employee Scavenger Hunt. Once or twice a year, they give every executive or manager five names of employees. They find each person, meet them, and learn about them as individuals. The process builds a better bond, improves communication, and builds trust within the organization.

Hire the best and avoid the rest. Research shows those organizations that spend more time recruiting high-caliber people earn 22% higher return to shareholders than their industry peers. Cisco CEO John Chambers said, “A world-class engineer with five peers can out produce 200 regular engineers.” Instead of waiting for people to apply for jobs, good organizations are always on the lookout for high-caliber people.

Provide learning opportunities. For many people, learning new skills is as important as the money they make. Identify career paths and provide developmental opportunities for employees early in their jobs with the organization. Promote on-going, two-way communication between employees and their immediate managers regarding career progress. In a study by Linkage, Inc. people said they would consider leaving their present employer for another job with the same benefits if that job provided better career development and greater challenges.

Make people feel appreciated. People want to be paid well, but also would like to be treated with respect and appreciation. Find creative ways to make people feel good about their job. We have helped organizations set up something called, “peer recognition.” Peer recognition allows people to reward each other for doing a good job. It works because employees are in the best position to catch people doing the right things. TD Industries in Dallas, Texas, helps their employees feel valued by using one wall within the company to place photographs of all employees who have been with the them more than five years. They also try to make everyone feel equal and have no reserved parking spaces for executives. That is one reason why TD Industries was listed by Fortune magazine as one of the Top 100 Best Places to Work.

Measure attitudes of your workforce. High-retention workplaces are using employee climate assessments to measure the attitudes and feeling of their workforce. Every organization should conduct some form of climate assessment periodically during the year.

Focus on individuals. You must manage retention one employee at a time. Focus on the key jobs that have the most impact on profitability and productivity. Everyone has a different set of needs and expectations about their jobs. By conducting an individual retention profile, managers can quickly identify the employee’s unique motivations, goals, level of job satisfaction, as well as other expectations.

Focus on the family. One small company gives their employees’ children a $50 Savings Bond twice a year when they get straight A’s on their report cards. Another survey of 1,000 companies showed half of them let workers stay home with mildly ill children without using vacation or sick days. Two-thirds permit flextime defined as allowing employees to adjust work hours on a daily basis.

http://www.businessknowhow.com/manage/retain-employees.htm

Unhappy employees because of work, career opportunities, challenges, dissatisfaction, conflict with the management or compensation causes high turnover. A high turnover indicates that few employees give satisfactory performance and is unsafe or unhealthy condition in a company.

Following are some of the more common reasons for high turnover in businesses:

• A bad match between the employee’s skills and the job. Employees who are placed in jobs that are too difficult for them or whose skills are underutilized may become discouraged and quit. Inadequate information about skill requirements that are needed to fill a job may result in the hiring of either underskilled or overqualified workers. The requirements of a specific job should be carefully studied for the required skills, and workers should be tested for the requisite qualifications. Use job analyses and job descriptions to minimize the chances of this happening.
• Substandard equipment, tools, or facilities. If working conditions are substandard or the workplace lacks important facilities such as proper lighting, furniture, restrooms and other health and safety provisions, employees will not be willing to put up with the inconvenience for long.
• Lack of opportunity for advancement or growth. If the job is basically a dead-end proposition, this should be explained before hiring so as not to mislead the employee. The job should be described precisely, without raising false hopes for growth and advancement in the position.
• Feelings of not being appreciated. Since employees generally want to do a good job, it follows that they also want to be appreciated and recognized for their work. Even the most seasoned employee needs to be told what he or she is doing right once in a while. Make sure your employees know that they are appreciated.
• Inadequate or lackluster supervision and training. Employees need guidance and direction. New employees may need extra help in learning an unfamiliar job. Similarly, the absence of a training program may cause workers to fall behind in their level of performance and feel that their abilities are lacking.
• Unequal or substandard wage structures. Inequities in pay structures or low pay are great causes of dissatisfaction and can drive some employees to quit. Again, a new worker may wonder why the person next to him is receiving a higher wage for what is perceived to be the same work. You should have a wage and job evaluation system in place not only so that you are sure to comply with equal pay for equal work requirements, but also to avoid this problem.

If you suspect that you have a either a turnover or a morale problem, look at your employees and ask yourself if any of the above apply (http://www.toolkit.com/small_business_guide/sbg.aspx?nid=P05_7135).