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Top five reasons why employees join and stay with organizations
A new Towers Watson research paper is shedding some light on what attracts employees to an organization (and what keeps them there after they’ve joined.) The 2012 Global Workforce Study includes responses from 32,000 employees in 29 markets around the world.
Here’s what people said attracts them to an organization and what would cause them to leave.
| Rank | Attraction | Retention |
| 1 | Base pay / Salary | Base pay / Salary |
| 2 | Job security | Career advancement opportunities |
| 3 | Career advancement opportunities | Relationship with supervisor / manager |
| 4 | Convenient work location | Trust / confidence in senior leadership |
| 5 | Learning and development opportunities | Manage / limit work-related stress |
Adapted from Top Five Global Drivers of Attraction, Retention and Sustainable Engagement Towers Watson 2012 Global Workforce Study At A Glance
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The study also looks at the factors that create an engaging work environment. It’s interesting to note that Towers Watson has expanded their definition of employee engagement—which they are calling “sustainable engagement”—to include enablement (having the tools, resources and support to do their job effectively), as well as energy (which means a work environment that actively supports employees’ well-being.)
Overall, the study showed that:
- Only 35% of workers rate high in all three areas and are engaged, energized and enabled.
- 22% are classified as unsupported, meaning they display traditional engagement, but lack the enablement and/or energy required for sustainable engagement.
- 17% are detached, meaning they feel enabled and/or energized, but are not willing to go the extra mile.
- 26% are completely disengaged, with less favorable scores for all three aspects of sustainable engagement.
Wondering where to get started in addressing some of these factors in your organization?
Abhishek Mittal, a senior consultant with Towers Watson in Singapore shares some possibilities for specifically addressing the enablement aspect of sustainable engagement in a separate, but related article, Building a Sustainable Engagement Strategy.
In the article, published late last year, he describes a Towers Watson study with a large Asian bank that identified:
“The analysis of over 300 branches found that the direct manager has a large impact on ‘enabling’ employees. When we look at branches where employees are more satisfied with their managers on a range of parameters, the employees tend to feel much more well-supported or enabled to deliver in their roles. Their perceptions about work resources, tools, condition and work organisation are much stronger than other branches. In turn, branches with more “enabled” employees clearly have a higher percentage of engaged customers. And, we saw clear links between engaged customers and higher target achievement on branch-level operating profits.”
To read more about the two studies, check out Building a Sustainable Engagement Strategy or 2012 Global Workforce Study: A Quick Glance
Exit interviews show top 10 reasons why employees quit
Ask employers why people quit a company and 9 out of 10 will tell you it’s about the money. Ask employees the same question and you’ll get a whole different story. PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) discovered this when they asked 19,000+ people their reasons for leaving as a part of exit interviews they conducted for clients. The top 10 reasons why employees quit? Check out the responses below.
As reported in (2005) The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave by Leigh Branham, page 21, Figure 3.1
Yes, compensation was a factor in 12% of the cases, but look at some of the other issues that drove people away—growth, meaningful work, supervisor skills, workload balance, fairness, and recognition—to name a few.
What type of environment are you providing for your people?
Author, speaker, and consultant Leigh Branham, who partnered with PwC to analyze the results of the study identifies that trust, hope, worth, and competence are at the core of most voluntary separations. When employees are not getting their needs met in these key areas, they begin to look elsewhere.
Wondering how your company would stack up in these areas? Here are a couple of questions to ask yourself. How would your people respond if they were asked to rate their work environment in each of the following areas?
- I am able to grow and develop my skills on the job and through training.
- I have opportunities for advancement or career progress leading to higher earnings.
- My job makes good use of my talents and is challenging.
- I receive the necessary training to perform my job capably.
- I can see the end results of my work.
- I receive regular feedback on my performance.
- I’m confident that if I work hard, do my best, demonstrate commitment, and make meaningful contributions, I will be recognized and rewarded accordingly.
Don’t wait until it’s too late
Better compensation is only a part of the reason why people leave an organization. In most cases it is a symptom of a more complex need that people have to work for an organization that is fair, trustworthy, and deserving of an individual’s best efforts. Don’t take your people for granted. While you may not be able to provide the pay increases you were able to in the past, there is nothing stopping you from showing that you care for your people, are interested in their long term development, and are committed to their careers.
Poor leadership costs average organization over $1 million dollars annually
A new white paper from The Ken Blanchard Companies shows that poor leadership is costing the average company an amount equal to 7% of their annual revenue. That’s over a million dollars a year for any organization with $15 million dollars or more in annual sales.
The three big culprits?
- Employee turnover. Poor leadership is responsible for up to 30% of the reasons why people leave their organizations according to exit interviews conducted by The Saratoga Institute.
- Customer turnover. Poor leadership negatively impacts employee satisfaction, which in turn negatively impacts customer satisfaction and retention. Research published in Harvard Business Review calculated that every 5 point change in employee satisfaction scores caused a 1.3 point change in customer satisfaction scores.
- Employee productivity. Poor leadership leads to poor employee productivity. Research from Blanchard shows that direct report productivity can be improved 5-12% through better management practices.
Most senior executives instinctively know that leadership impacts the bottom line, but quantifying that impact has been a challenge in the past. This new white paper (and the free online calculator that the information is drawn from) is a great way for leaders to put some facts behind their suspicions.
You can download a copy of this new white paper, Making the Business Case for Leadership Development: The 7% Differential here. If you are interested in calculating what poor leadership practices might be costing your organization, also check out Blanchard’s free online Cost of Doing Nothing Calculator. This is the same free online calculator used by survey respondents in the white paper.
On-Boarding: How to Shorten Ramp-up Times for Employees
Join The Ken Blanchard Companies for a complimentary webinar and online chat beginning today at 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time (12:00 noon Eastern).
Madeleine Homan-Blanchard, coauthor of Coaching in Organizations and Leading at a Higher Level will be discussing three strategies for getting people off to a fast start in a new role in a special presentation of On-Boarding: How to Shorten Ramp-up Times for Employees.
The webinar is free and seats are still available if you would like to join over 600 people expected to participate. Immediately after the webinar, Madeleine will be answering follow-up questions over at our sister blog, The Coaching Source for about 30 minutes.
We hope you can join us later today for this special complimentary event courtesy of Cisco WebEx and The Ken Blanchard Companies.
8/22/11 update: Recording of this event is now available online. To learn more, visit On-Boarding: How to Shorten Ramp-up Times for Employees
Understanding “The Dip” and Why People Quit
There’s a good reason why more people don’t run and jog to improve their cardiovascular health. It hurts—especially when you’re just starting out. For me it occurs at about the 3:00 minute mark. That’s when the early burst of excitement (and caffeine) burns off and now my heart and lungs are laboring to catch-up with the demands my legs are putting on my body.
It’s a time each morning when I really want to quit—and in a lot of cases I did, because it seems like it was getting worse and worse with no improvement in sight. But an interesting thing happens if I just stay with it a little while longer. At about the 6:00 minute mark, my heart and lungs do catch up, my breathing is heavy but measured, and I realize that the worst is over. I can do this!
The same thing happens at work when people face a new difficult task or role. There is a moment, after the excitement of trying something new wears off, when we realize that this is going to be more difficult than we thought.
Seth Godin writes about this phenomenon is his book, “The Dip” and it has important insight for any manager looking to improve growth and retention in their organization. That’s because “the dip” is a prime time when many employees quit a task or a role because it seems too hard with no improvement in sight.
Do you have any employees who are at or near their “dipping point” on a task or role? What are you, as a manager, doing to help them get through it? Here are three tips that can help.
- Identify where each employee is at with a specific task or role. Are they an enthusiastic beginner, or has disillusionment set in?
- If they are an enthusiastic beginner, channel that excitement by having them work on the right tasks, in the right order, to get the job done.
- If disillusionment has set in, add a strong coaching component into the mix. In addition to clear direction, you are going to have to provide them with a lot of support while they work through “the dip.” Encourage them on progress (even when they can’t see it), remind them of the goal, and make time to be there with training and other resources.
Don’t let “the dip” scuttle your plans. With a little bit of help, people can power through to success.
Trust or Consequences
“Hoping all your consequences are happy ones.” That was Bob Barker’s signature sign-off phrase when he hosted the 1960’s TV game show Truth or Consequences. The premise of the show was that contestants were presented with a question of “truth” (trivia or a bad joke), that if they didn’t answer correctly, would lead to a consequence that was usually some sort of zany or embarrassing stunt.
As I reviewed Deloitte’s recent Trust in the Workplace – 2010 Ethics & Workplace Survey, I was reminded of the dire consequences faced by organizational leaders who don’t get the right answer when it comes to understanding and appreciating the critical importance of trust in today’s workplace. Read more…
Live Chat on The High Cost of Doing Nothing
Join The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Kathy Cuff and David Witt for a live, online chat today at 10:05 a.m. Pacific Time. Cuff and Witt will be answering questions immediately after their webinar on The High Cost of Doing Nothing: Quantifying the Impact of Leadership on the Bottom Line. Cuff and Witt will be exploring how leadership impacts employee productivity, turnover, and customer satisfaction levels. The webinar is free and is a part of The Ken Blanchard Companies monthly webinar series co-sponsored with Cisco Webex.
To participate in the online discussion, stop by http://www.leaderchat.org beginning at 10:05 a.m. Pacific Time.
Instructions for Participating in the Online Chat
If you have a question that you would like to ask Kathy Cuff or David Witt, just click on the COMMENTS link above. Then post your question and push SUBMIT COMMENT. Kathy and Dave will answer as many questions as possible during the 30-minute online Q&A. (Be sure to press F5 to refresh your screen occasionally to see the latest responses.)
If you can’t stay for the entire 30-minute chat, but would like to see all of the questions and responses, you can always stop by later. You can also click on the RSS FEED button in the right-hand column to receive updates automatically through email.
Employee Turnover, Customer Satisfaction, and Employee Productivity—Why Good isn’t Good Enough
Maintaining the status quo costs more than you think. In fact, in the average organization it costs over $1,000,000 dollars a year according to The Ken Blanchard Companies new Cost of Doing Nothing Calculator. The calculator which was just released on the company’s web site identifies three potential drains on performance—employee turnover, customer satisfaction, and employee productivity.
Using formulas based on independent research the calculator helps executives identify what excessive employee turnover costs a company when good people with developed skills leave an organization, what dissatisfied customers cost a company, and how less than optimal employee productivity numbers translate into bottom line impact.
The overall result? A shocking $1,000, 000 dollars or more in most cases.
Interested in finding out what your Cost of Doing Nothing might be? You can check out the Cost of Doing Nothing Calculator for free at www.costofdoingnothing.com or by clicking here to access The Ken Blanchard Companies web site.
