Employers often don’t understand why great employees and long serving employees often choose to leave a company.It’s very normal for staff to come and go every now and then.
But what actually lead them to leave their job and how to retain these people?
Based on yesterday and today, TheStar newspaper article written by Andree Mangers, a senior consultant in Robert Walters Singapore had pointed out several key factors on how to motivate your employees in order to retain them.
Are you familiar with a reason given by your staff when he’s about to leave a company and employer tries all ways to counter-offer with an attractive package or benefits and often gets this answer in return.
“It’s not about money….”
I agree with Andree there are intangible factors that employees seek in their careers and the organisations they work for. According to Andree, employers should understand these needs and thus helping them to increase their employee motivation, which in turn lead to higher job satisfaction, retention and productivity.
Employees look for the 7 magical intangible factors:-
Let me define intangible first of all, intangible is something of value that cannot be physically touched,non-monetary that cannot be seen and can’t be physically measured.
I am not saying that monetary is not important, we need money to survive therefore monetary is as important as intangible factors when it comes to retaining employees.
Okay back to the 7 intangible factors:-
1) A great Boss
Surveys shown that boss are the reasons for people to leave their job or even their colleagues who gives them a hard time.
While a great boss is someone who can joke and well loved by his employees and these employees often have higher level of staff loyalty.
People spend big portion of their lifetime at work and it will gives a great impact to have a greatest boss in the world wide world. Well, most of the time people won’t get this type of employer perhaps in your dream.
2) Trust and respect
Have you experience being instruct to do this and that and telling you about the way it should be done? Does this sounds familiar to you?. Employers should trust and show some respect to their staff meaning to treat them like adults and trusting them to do their best for the company.
This also means allowing room for failures and mistakes, and believing that they will improve.
Many employers are so impatient that they often blame and pass judgment, disregarding their staff’s opinions and explanations. Employers should respect people who have limitations and work with them to solve any obstacles rather than saying hurtful words to them.
When an employees feel respected,they will more likely to respect their employer and they are more willing to move mountains and go the extra miles just to see a happy smiles on the face of their employer.
3) Appreciation and recognition
I believe everyone wants some appreciation and recognition for doing things for other people. Employees also expect this in return. They want to feel that their contributions are appreciated and they are being rewarded for their achievements.
This doesn’t mean you need to treat them to a luxury dinner or buffet. Just a simple note thanking them will carry a lot of significant. But it must comes from a genuine compliment.
The more personal the recognition, the more rewarded the employees will feel.
When people know their efforts are being appreciated that much, they are more motivated to perform better.
4) Career progression
At times, employees feels stagnant or redundant in their jobs. When they feel they are not of value to the organisation.
As employer, you need to have a plan for individual growth. Challenged in their work is what they are seeking for. They also want to upgrade themselves, either through training or taking on more responsibilities and expanding their portfolios.
In a survey done by Robert Walter, respondents claimed that their main reasons for moving to new career was to seek better career development or job promotion opportunities.
“Giving someone a raise without additional responsibilities or the possibility of advancement is actually counter -productive as it send the message that there is no light at the end of the tunnel.”
“Employees will be richer when compensated with money, of course, but not necessarily happier when they realise they are stuck in a dead-end job”
5) Corporate culture
If your company have those senior management and plus they have work for so many years in your organisation. More often, these seniors managers will try to shape the company’s culture. Thus, employees at the bottom of the hierarchy will be order to do as “instructed”. These too will lead them to resign when their opinions will not be valued anyway.
On the other hand, a more open and consultation culture encourages employee feedback and sharing of ideas, and people are less afraid to take risks and make mistakes.
Some people may prefer to work in a bottom line in an organization while other look for a balance in work-life balance. Whichever culture you have decide for your company, it has to be one that people can thrive and interact in.
6) Communication
One of the major complaints from employees during exit interviews is lacking of communication within organization.
Senior managers keeping internal updates, plans, directions and strategies among themselves and often only relays to higher level management. They are no regular meetings to brief their employees on how the company is doing, it’s existing challenges and where it is heading to. Everything is not transparent.
Regular internal communications allows staff a sense of belonging to this office family like environment when everyone knows about company’s vision and objectives.
7) Social obligations
As people become more aware of social and environmental issues, they feel an obligation to be responsible or, want to belong to an organization that takes responsibility for issues that may potentially have a huge impact on the world or society.
No employees like to work for a company that are being accused of using child labour, contributing to pollution, practicing workplace discrimination or being negligent in its manufacturing practices.
If an organization is socially responsible, it will not only benefit from positive branding and good reputation, the goodwill it builds will attract, keep and develop human capital, keeping operations and staff morale high.
Not just the money.
The new generation of employees are no longer defining money as sole factor for job satisfaction and loyalty. They are concerned with who they work for and with, the company’s environment and level of staff engagement within an organization.
Many people are now looking beyond salary and benefits as pull factor for taking just a “job”, they want the keys mention earlier as key criteria for a fulfilling and rewarding career.
Even in a tough economic times, organization should identify these key factors to retain and motivate their employees.
Reason are employees no longer just want a job, they are actively seeking a career that satisfy not only their monetary demands, but their social and emotional needs as well.
Companies that can provide a balance in these needs will set themselves apart being just an organization because with the existence of micro blogging sites in this new generation, it can bing a huge impact on their reputations as “The Employer of Choice”.
(Reference: TheStar newspaper article written by Andree Mangers, a senior consultant in Robert Walters Singapore)