Losing institutional knowledge is a b*tch. It costs more to get new people up to speed in terms of time and productivity lost, than to just retain people who already have the institutional knowledge.
Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests
41–50 of 247 posts
Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests
#42The weird thing is, if you, as an employee start to show feint signs of wanting to leave, e.g. by complaining a lot to colleagues, or having an upset look on one's face, usually it is not acted upon, or even not picked up by any manager. If on the other hand you make it very clear that you are unhappy or that you might want to leave, it is understood as you are going to leave anyway, so they don't bother fixing any o…
At my last startup, one of our employees approached this well. This is a very summarized version, but he came to me and said: "I'd like to be paid $X. I think I deserve it and I believe I can get that salary on the open market. I don't want to negotiate on this."
It was a very significant raise but after a short discussion with my cofounders, we agreed and gave him what he asked for. That he was a top performer made it an easy decision.
Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests
#43Margaret Thatcher (in)famously said that there was no such thing as society. By that she meant that, actually the only thing out there is individuals looking after their own self-interests. Well, it is the same with companies. In both case this leads to suboptimal results at 'system level' (a well-known problem in system optimisation).
Thatcherism has little basis in actual sociology in my opinion.
Societies do exist, and humans are not purely selfish rational beings either.
Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a common response to this issue, but I think there is a logical flaw in it. Employers don't know ahead of time which employees will leave and which will stay. In order to improve their employee retention, employers have to pay _all_ of their employees more, not just the ones that eventually will leave. This changes the math entirely. For example, suppose it costs 50% extra to replace someone who leaves. In re…
Presumably not everyone is as valuable or risky.
This is exactly how we look at it. Those who are more valuable get larger annual raises.
Also, during a high turnover period around a year ago, we even bumped a few people up mid year when we normally do salary increases at the beginning of the year. These folks were very happy and I think it earned a lot of trust that we looked at the market rates, determined they were underpaid, and made sure they were at least getting what they'd get paid elsewhere.
Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests
#45I work for a tech company that promotes internally quite well in recent years. But they also only want to hire senior, principal and lead level engineers to develop a mature workforce. Unfortunately, they fail to attract enough talent to replace attrition, which is high due to increasingly paltry employee numbers. And all in all, while the promotion-to-hiring ratio is good, there is too little hiring to keep employees from working 70-100 hour weeks. I am leaving, too, even if I was promised a promotion within months. I suppose the moral of the story is that balance is good, but hiring also must happen to replace attrition.
Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests
#46When people say they want career progression, and opportunities, what they mostly mean is they want more money. Unfortunately, most companies have fallen into the trap where if someone has a title of X they can only make up to Y, regardless of how good they are at their job or how long they've done it. When that happens then the name of the game is getting a promotion in order to keep making more money. That creates…
> Pay your people well if they're doing a good job
Comparing peoples performance objectively in a large organisation is essentially impossible. Only the people working closely with someone really have any idea, and even then they only see part of the picture.
Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests
#47Too many times in my career have I seen an employer lose an employee, who has a ton of institutional knowledge and performs adequately or even excellently, only to replace them them with someone that ends up costing much more money, and then takes a lot of time to get up to speed (which also slows the folks who help get them up to speed). It is like they haven't taken the time to even make a rudimentary calculation o…
This is a common response to this issue, but I think there is a logical flaw in it. Employers don't know ahead of time which employees will leave and which will stay. In order to improve their employee retention, employers have to pay _all_ of their employees more, not just the ones that eventually will leave. This changes the math entirely. For example, suppose it costs 50% extra to replace someone who leaves. In re…
It's almost like you need to identify which employees are key contributors and pay them appropriately. Imagine that.
Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
But accounting and HR will time your bathroom breaks. I guess the watchers don't like being watched, which is why retention isn't a bother for them.
Ha. I had the CFO once call me angrily asking where I was......I was in the bathroom. She told me to get back to my desk. I took my time.
These are the people who hate work from home culture. They can't tell who is at their desk in the particular second that they decide it's important.
Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests
#49It seems to me employers don't see employees as a (good!) target for investment anymore, the idea that you can build your workforce, but rather are obsessed with transactional labour: I have X currency, I want Y FTE of credential Z for it.
Transactional attitudes begets itself.
Re: Employers should prioritize retention over hiring, study suggests
#50When people say they want career progression, and opportunities, what they mostly mean is they want more money. Unfortunately, most companies have fallen into the trap where if someone has a title of X they can only make up to Y, regardless of how good they are at their job or how long they've done it. When that happens then the name of the game is getting a promotion in order to keep making more money. That creates…
"Reward seniority and loyalty regardless of job title" Well janitor retention would surely go through the roof, but I think you might lose a lot of upper management and software engineers.
Good