The Coming Retention Crisis

by Scott Sallee, Senior Career Consultant

 

All right, you made a tough business decision and reduced your workforce to increase profit. After all, you have a responsibility to run your business profitably, right? Your workers are being more productive now, but only because you're overworking them. They are the ones who survived the last round of layoffs. These are your best employees, but a lot of them have had their pay cut, bonuses eliminated and benefits reduced. After all, these people should just be happy to have a job in this economy, right?

 

Well, they may be smiling on the outside, but on the inside...

 

These are the employees most likely to "jump ship" as soon as a better opportunity comes along. They have unaddressed issues that have caused them to lose faith in their employer (You). They may no longer feel that your company is looking out for them, so they're going to start "looking out for #1."

 

Unless you start to address the issues that are making employees unhappy, you risk a mass exodus as soon as the job market starts to improve.

 

A recent survey by Adecco showed the following grim statistics:

 

• 66% of employees are disappointed with their paychecks.
• 48% of employees are unhappy with their relationship with their bosses.
• 59% of employees are not on the same page with their coworkers.
• 76% of employees are unhappy with their future career opportunities.

Companies can respond to these statistics in one of three ways:

1. Assess and address the issues leading to employee dissatisfaction.
2. Start running ads and building up a bank of candidates to fill future openings.
3. Do nothing.

LMA offers a plan to assess and address employee issues so that your workforce isn't devastated by the coming flood of job hopping.

 

A typical action plan involves the following steps:

1. Survey your employees through anonymous questionnaires to determine the major issues leading to employee dissatisfaction.
2. Draw conclusions from the most common issues.
3. Create an action plan to address these issues.
4. Implement your action plan.
5. Conduct a second assessment to track the effectiveness of your plan. Issues change as you implement plans; fine-tune your action plan.

The principles and attention that build and prosper companies need to be applied to the workforce. Left unattended, employee issues and resulting attitudes will spread like wildfire. Failure to create an action plan now can have catastrophic results later.

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Scott Sallee, is a Senior Consultant with LMA Consulting Group. With over 20 years of experience in career services, recruiting and consulting, Scott assists outplaced employees with re-entering the workforce and provides counseling and guidance for people making a career transition. Scott may be contacted at 717-509-8889 or ssallee@lmaconsulting.cc.

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