RETENTION
Why people change jobs
All companies need to understand why employees change jobs in order to control turnover and retention levels, but many are failing to do so, according to recent research from Watson Wyatt.
Watson Wyatt’s study, looking at companies across Europe, found that there is a significant mismatch between companies’ perceptions of why people change jobs and the reasons employees actually give for doing so.
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The report, Strategic Rewards, involved 175 companies across France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom. In addition, similar studies were undertaken in North America and Asia, and results of the European study are broadly consistent with these.
Overall, Watson Wyatt found that a large number of companies across Europe see career development opportunities, their organisation’s reputation and the level of base pay offered as the leading reasons new employees look to join them.
In contrast, however, the top reasons given by employees were the nature of the work, job security and base pay as reasons they might be recruited.
Why staff quit is also misunderstood
Once in place, there was a similar mismatch in the perceptions of why employees leave companies. On the one hand, employers focused on lack of opportunities to develop careers, poor promotion prospects and dissatisfaction with base pay levels.
On the other hand, employees rank increasing stress levels, uncompetitive base pay and the lack of promotion opportunities as important considerations when deciding to leave.
Other key results
A top performer was 66% more likely to say that their immediate supervisor does a good job of communicating organisational and performance management issues than a poor performer would.
Only a third of poor performers were able to say that their immediate manager does a good job of communicating expectations for organisational financial performance, that their manager does a good job of establishing goals for their individual performance that are linked to business objectives, or that their immediate manager does a good job of providing direct feedback on their individual performance.
Moreover, less than 30% could agree that their immediate manager does a good job of linking organisational performance to rewards or of linking their individual performance to rewards.
A final word
“Companies appear to be putting far more emphasis on long-term career planning than employees are themselves. The priorities of many employees are rather more prosaic – the nature of the job, pay, stress and commuting. This is not to say employers are focused on the wrong things to attract and retain; career development and promotion opportunities are still rated as important by large numbers of employees. But employers need to increase their focus on more immediate needs as well, such as the nature of the work they do now, and the internal and external pressures that affect employees’ working experience, like stress and length of commute.” - Carole Hathaway, European head of strategic reward at Watson Wyatt.
Want to know more?
Title: Strategic Rewards, Watson Wyatt.
Availability: To find out more email: customerservice@watsonwyatt.com, tel: +32 2 678 15 11.
Watson Wyatt is the “trusted business partner to the world’s leading organisations on people and financial issues”. The firm’s global services include: managing the cost and effectiveness of employee benefit programmes; developing attraction, retention and reward strategies; and delivering related technology, outsourcing and data services. Watson Wyatt has 7,000 associates in 31 countries and is located on the web at www.watsonwyatt.com.