Employees Are The Brand
Despite the opinions of advertisers, marketing agents, and promoters, ultimately employees are your brand. They are are the public face of a company. They determine the quality of experience your customers and vendors have. From those experiences, people will shape opinions about your company. This impacts how attractive your company is to future customers, employees, and business partners. Collectively, employees determine the workplace culture of your organization or company. Employees can inspire and attract others seeking employment, or turn them away. They can draw customers in, or send them elsewhere.
Your reputation equity will rise or fall depending
on how happy your employees are.
Workplace Culture
The workplace culture as collectively conveyed by the employees of a company will determine how badly people want to work at your company. If you’re known for having unpleasant working conditions, and overworking people, you’ll need to pay more to attract new employees. By contrast, if you’re known for providing a pleasant and rewarding workplace, then you can probably pay less, which could save millions of dollars in payroll expenses, and reduce retraining costs that are necessary by companies that continually lose workers. As mentioned above, your employees are in a position to be one of the best promotional forces for hiring.
As an added benefit, happy employees are more productive. “A recent study by economists at the University of Warwick found that happiness led to a 12% spike in productivity, while unhappy workers proved 10% less productive.” [source]
Managers and Supervisors Impact Employees
Managers and supervisors are likely the ones best equipped and positioned to influence the quality of employees hired, and then their attitude and job satisfaction once hired. Middle and upper management shape and influence the collective public face of the company, and determine whether that face is a frown or a smile.
Employee Churn and Attrition
We often look at churn rate (attrition) as a measure of workplace satisfaction, but other factors can impact these metrics, such as trends in the job market. Just because employees are staying, doesn’t necessarily mean they are happy. The meaningfulness of attrition is understood when considering the existing job market. The same attrition rates from one year to the next may not mean the same thing. If employees leave in a lean market, then that’s a greater indicator of dissatisfaction than if they leave when jobs are plentiful.
The Cause and Cost of Attrition
One of the most identified reasons that employees leave is because of dissatisfaction with supervisors. If companies are losing employees due to poor management, then there’s a real measurable cost and loss to that poor leadership. If the losses are too great, then those supervisors become a net loss for the business and a liability.
Certified Human Capital Strategist Melany Gallant explains: “Employee turnover can be costly. Various sources estimate it can cost anywhere from 30 to 400% (the average being 150%) of an employee’s annual salary to replace them, depending on their level, experience, skill set, etc.” [source]
In a market where qualified, skilled, hard working, and experienced employees are hard to find, the following articles offer helpful insights into why good employees leave good companies, and what can be done about it.
Why Good People Leave Good Companies
The following articles offer insights into what can go wrong, and how to avoid it.
- ArousingSuccess.com – “The Top 10 Reasons why Employers Lose Their Best People,” by Dr. Jeannie LeMesurier.
- Excerpt: “Many organizational managers are poor leaders. Rather than inspire, they lack the ability to motivate; sometimes they even demotivate. Many managers have found themselves in leadership roles quite by accident. They were top performers on a technical level themselves, and either became supervisors by promotion or by ownership. This does not make them inherently good and productive managers of people. … A negative atmosphere in the workplace is not only stressful but it’s also harmful on the morale, wellbeing and health of workers. It can decrease both employee retention as well as clients and customers retention.” [More…]
- Forbes – “People Leave Managers, Not Companies,” by Victor Lipman, 4 Aug 2015.
- Excerpt: “”
- Forbes – “Why Some Companies Lose Their Best People – And Others Don’t,” by Erika Andersen, 27 Aug 2012.
- Excerpt: “Eric Jackson wrote an excellent post last winter that I just ran across this morning, Why Companies Are Terrible at Selecting, Retaining and Motivating Their Talent. He offers ten reasons, but they really all come down to this: ‘most companies give lip service to the importance of good employees, but they don’t actually treat them as though they’re important.’ Companies that keep most of their great people, at every level, treat them like valued partners in the business’ success.” [More…]
- Huffington Post – “9 Things Managers Do That Make Good Employees Quit,” by Travis Bradberry, 2 Jan 2016. See also Entrepreneur.com, 9 Sept 2015.
- Excerpt: “Managers tend to blame their turnover problems on everything under the sun, while ignoring the crux of the matter: people don’t leave jobs; they leave managers. The sad thing is that this can easily be avoided. All that’s required is a new perspective and some extra effort on the manager’s part. First, we need to understand the nine worst things that managers do that send good people packing… Nothing burns good employees out quite like overworking them… If you simply increase workload because people are talented, without changing a thing, they will seek another job that gives them what they deserve.” [More…]
- Huffington Post – “People Don’t Leave Companies — They Leave Leaders!,”by Greg Savage, 19 Nov 2013.
- Excerpt: “Mostly, people don’t change jobs solely for money. They almost never resign on a whim or in a fit of anger. They joined your company because they believed it right for them, and they actually want it to be right. Something, at some point, makes it wrong. And if you really take the time to dig into their real reasons for leaving — and you should — you will find that it’s not ‘the company’ they blame. It’s not the location, or the team, or the database or the air-conditioning. It’s the leadership!” [More…]
- TrainingMag.com – “Employees Don’t Leave Organizations, They Leave Bad Bosses,” by Dr. M.S. Rao, 14 August 2015.
- Excerpt: “There is a popular saying that employees don’t leave organizations, they leave their leaders. The same saying can be reframed in different ways. It conveys a message that although employees like their organizations, they leave them due to differences with their immediate bosses or superiors. Additionally, there is a myth that employees leave organizations only for money. In fact, they look beyond money. Other reasons for leaving include improper equation with their immediate superiors, organizational politics, lack of interest in the job, ego clashes with their peers, and stress. Research shows that 50 percent of employees have a shaky relationship with their superiors. It is a cause for concern globally. Due to bad bosses, employee morale sinks, productivity tanks, and attrition goes up.”
Retention Infographic
Below is an exceptional Infographic provided to us by the friendly people at ManilaRecruitment.com who saw our article above and thought their infographic would be a nice addition. Established in 2010, Manila Recruitment is a full service recruitment consultancy providing executive, expert and technical recruitment support for the Filipino market. Click here for the source article for this infographic.
