{"id":626,"date":"2007-02-02T07:29:00","date_gmt":"2007-02-02T13:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2007\/02\/the-etiquette-of-retention\/"},"modified":"2007-02-02T07:29:39","modified_gmt":"2007-02-02T13:29:39","slug":"the-etiquette-of-retention","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2007\/02\/the-etiquette-of-retention\/","title":{"rendered":"The Etiquette Of Retention"},"content":{"rendered":"

Does ‘Thank You’ Help Keep Associates?<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

First the setup from the article:<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n
The presentation showed that the New York firm, now with about 625 lawyers, lost 31% of its associates in 2004 and 30% in 2005<\/strong>. The average associate attrition rate for law firms of about that size or bigger for 2004 was 21%, up from 16% in 2002, according to a study by the National Association for Law Placement.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
30% turnover! That is a staggering number when you think of the highly-skilled legal profession. Now, since they are lawyers they needed consulting help on something that probably seems trivial to you and me.<\/p>\n
To deal with low associate morale and high attrition, a confidential slide presentation reviewed by The Wall Street Journal urged partners to say things like “thank you” and “good work” to associates they supervise. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Yes, it would seem the lawyers needed a high-powered slide presentation to explain good managerial etiquette. This caught my eye:<\/p>\n
What else should partners do? “Return associates’ phone calls as quickly as you would a partner’s or client’s,” said one bullet. “Be sensitive to not canceling associates’ vacations<\/strong>,” said another.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Canceling vacations? Ah, yeah, don’t do that. In all seriousness, it is fun to make light of lawyers but I have encountered this behavior in sales roles too.<\/p>\n
I once worked for a difficult sales manager who rarely gave out compliments and when he did, it was little more than a throw-away line – “Good job.” That was the extent of it. Of course, he was often enthused to offer criticism. In those instances I would usually receive a dissertation from him.<\/p>\n
That behavior establishes the culture of the department and defines the morale. I realize managing is difficult and being a friend is not necessarily in the best interest of the company. But a manager does need to respect the employee’s effort, be fair in their management decisions and make sure their empathetically aware of the employee’s perspective. I believe that approach will have the greatest impact on improving employee retention.<\/p>\n
Even in a law firm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"","bgseo_robots_follow":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14,23,4,11,22],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5Oho-a6","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}