In a recent article from Workforce Management on new employee retention, 7 months seems to be the magic number when it comes to retaining newly hired employees. Office Angels interviewed 1,400 new recruits on this subject. Here are some of their findings. In the first seven months the workplace is viewed as a trial period for: The boss – is he or she ‘lackluster?’ Are there mentoring opportunities available for them? Does the new job accommodate their lifestyle? Another important opportunity new employees look for is the camaraderie between the team. 77% of the respondents find it essential for the team to make a trip to the local pub. No,… Read More
Continue ReadingTraining And Retention
CareerJournal.com offers this quick read – Hiring and Cultivating Employees Who Succeed – which covers the critical topics of hiring and retaining top talent. This opening statement obviously caught my attention: Business owner Andrew Field says he used to hire based on gut instinct. No longer. My kind of owner – one who has experienced the debacle of bad hiring decisions made on instinct instead of objective analysis. Their solution has been to use a multiple interviewer process that I would question, but they have lowered their turnover by half. If they were to objectively assess in their process, they could lower that turnover rate even further. Here is the… Read More
Continue ReadingThe Turnover Symptom
Turnover is a symptom of a deeper disease in most companies. A consistent turnover level typically speaks to one of two problems – poor management skills or hiring the wrong employees. Corporate culture, compensation and other topics can come in to play, but I want to focus on the former topics. One of our placements resigned this week after only 6 weeks in the role. This is not a sales position so it is somewhat outside of our expertise. Nonetheless, I contacted the former employee and discussed with her what went sideways. She laid most of the blame at the feet of one of the co-owners of the company and… Read More
Continue ReadingFilling The Leadership Gap
CareerJournal.com provides an interesting look at one Minnesota company in Manager Shortage Spurs Firms to Grow Their Own. Schwan found itself with a significant shortage of leadership talent that is symptomatic of the national hiring landscape. The tight labor market puts a premium on retaining top talent and raises the cost of outside hires. And leaner corporate structures make it harder for managers to naturally hone their skills through incremental steps up the ladder; companies must instead formally teach them. Demographics play a role, too: The looming retirement of baby boomers is forcing companies to think about replacements. Schwan has developed an internal solution to combat this problem: Schwan is… Read More
Continue ReadingTime To Source Salespeople
There are certain windows for sourcing salespeople that are better than other times of the year. Right now we are in the best window for sourcing salespeople for the entire year. The reason is that many salespeople are on commission plans that pay out the highest total after the year is completed. In many instances, that commission payout occurs towards the end of January. I spent many years selling on these types of plans and can tell you that I would not leave in January since I was waiting for my largest commission check of the year. The different variations of commission plans I sold under usually had some accelerated… Read More
Continue ReadingThe Etiquette Of Retention
Does ‘Thank You’ Help Keep Associates? from CareerJournal.com takes a look at turnover/retention issues at a major law firm. Scary, I know. However, there is a good lesson in here in regards to retaining top employees. First the setup from the article: Faced with a surge in turnover of its associates, the prestigious law firm Sullivan & Cromwell LLP has been putting on a charm offensive to hold onto junior lawyers. The presentation showed that the New York firm, now with about 625 lawyers, lost 31% of its associates in 2004 and 30% in 2005. The average associate attrition rate for law firms of about that size or bigger for… Read More
Continue ReadingOnboarding Executives
From BusinessWeek online’s How To Take The Reins At Top Speed: In today’s era of increasingly activist investors and boards, a heightened focus on fast results is making the first few months feel more like a trial by fire than a honeymoon. … “Many senior executives feel they have a much shorter time frame to prove themselves.” This accelerated productivity demand is common to almost all positions within a company. I am appreciative of CEOs finally having this demand placed upon them also. In sales, it has been this way for years . . . maybe decades. Despite having a name only a consultant or HR professional could love –… Read More
Continue ReadingWhen Drivers Of Retention Are Misaligned
I’m a little late to the party on this post from Spherion’s The Big Time blog. The post covers many interesting topics. To start (emphasis mine): 23 percent of companies are already dissatisfied with the talent available. One-third of HR managers mention turnover/retention as a key concern. On average, employers expect 14 percent of their workforce to leave within the next year. 31 percent of workers believe there is a turnover or retention problem at their company, and 39 percent of workers themselves expect to leave in the next year. Less than half (44 percent) of workers believe their company is taking steps to retain its employees. You can see… Read More
Continue ReadingEmployee Retention Wake-Up Call – Part 2
A couple of months ago we posted on an article from the Pioneer Press titled Speaking Up Helps Keep Star Workers. One of the surprising findings was that 47% of the 16,273 stellar workers surveyed are mailing out resumes, going on job interviews, even contemplating other offers. I just recently caught up to an article from a WorkForce Management newsletter of a survey Yahoo HotJobs conducted on 5,300 people. They found that nearly two-thirds are open to switching jobs, with an improving job market cited as the chief cause for such optimism. Here are some interesting points they found: 39% cited unhappiness with wages as the chief issue 75% cited… Read More
Continue ReadingWhen Turnover Is Good
We met this morning with a sales manager from one of our clients and had an interesting discussion about turnover. This company is in an “old-line” industry and has an established salesforce. In fact, the newest salesperson has been with the company for more than 5 years. Most have a 10 to 20 year tenure – retention is not a problem since this is a good employer. The problem is this – their business has had to change over the past year to match the marketplace. There has been no layoffs, but some restructuring and new management has been added. These changes, according to our sales manager, have caused much… Read More
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