In today’s job market one of the most important skills you must master as a Hiring Authority or Owner of any type of company is retaining your people.
The trend becoming more evident than ever is there are more job opportunities than there
are qualified individuals. This will be the case for the near future and for the many years following. Therefore, it is critical that you fine tune your skills that will play a part of retention. People stay with a company for many different reasons. Some of the following reasons are why people stay: job security, flexible work hours, flexible work days, recognition for their work, a work culture that recognizes the importance of work-life balance or a sense of loyalty and belonging!

The above reasons are generalities and will vary from company to company. They can also vary widely from country to country. However, in cultures in which it is assumed that people change jobs on a quite frequent basis. It is not uncommon for the average American to change jobs every 3 to 4 years. Even more surprising, they may actually change their career altogether 2 or 3 times in a lifetime.

The major motivations for staying at a company are as follows:
A Respected Superior: It is extremely important that the employee has a good relationship with their direct report. People will stay if there is a mutual respect between them and their supervisor. Employees spend a lot of time at their job and enjoying the people around them can make all the difference.
Fair Compensation: This point is simply stated, people want to work for a company that offers them a fair compensation package. The amount of actual compensation and benefit package are the obvious points. The second point deals with the intangible compensation in the form of opportunities to learn, grow and succeed.
Pride in the Organization: People want to work for highly reputable corporations. They search for well-managed companies lead by skilled leaders. They want a clear Vision and Purpose outlined. They also want to know the future of the company.
Affiliation: The opportunity to work with professionals of all levels.
Meaningful Work: It is very important that people view their work as meaningful. Satisfying work stimulates interest and that is a great way to keep employees productive.

Overall, the key component is focusing on these motivations as well as any others in order to retain the employees that you need and want to retain!

Nancy J. Phillips, CPC

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 1st, 2007 at 3:55 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.