From today’s excellent ERE.net article Employees Are Not Assets:

Employees As Investors

One of our problems is that we think of employees as assets, or things we control and dispose of as we see fit. Unfortunately, this characterization leads to behaviors that are incompatible with reality. Employees cannot be owned, taxed, depreciated, or disposed of as machines or other tangible assets.

They are investors in our organizations and they freely choose to share their expertise and skills with us or not. Each employee has a built-in return on investment meter that is constantly sampling the atmosphere and deciding if she is gaining or losing from a continuing association with the firm. As long as employees feel they are gaining, they don’t look for different jobs.

But in this job market, whenever the balance shifts even slightly, employees become vulnerable to any offer that may present itself. That is why having managers who have a history of good employee loyalty and low turnover are so valuable.

I think the author makes a great point in the context of today’s talent demands.  He couches the article around the need to allow employees to have positional movement within your company.  It is a compelling argument.

The key here is to monitor your manager’s retention rate within his department and within the company (do employees want to stay with the company but get out of that dept.?).

About 5 years ago we worked with a large company who had many sales managers within its divisions.  It was quite clear which managers were adept at growing their people and retaining top talent.  There was one manager who was able to retain his “right-hand man” and nobody else – his department was a consistent turnstile.  After our first meeting with him, it became quite apparent why this was.

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