Top 5 Reasons Employees Quit

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, turnover costs an organization 33% of an employees total compensation.

So the employee making $30,000 total annually, would cost you over $10,000 to replace. And that's just the financial impact. There is also a negative impact on overall morale and productivity.

Additionally, results from those who have utilized our W.A.V.E.S.™ (Workforce Attitude and Voicing Employee Satisfaction) Survey have revealed some shocking statistics regarding potential turnover:

>  33% say they would consider leaving their current company for a better offer;

>  20% say they are unhappy with how their bonus is determined;

>  22% say they could use more training; and

>  well over 1/3 of employees say that senior management does NOT understand the obstacles faced by employees or the company!

To prevent turnover and its effects on the entire company, it is imperative for management to understand WHY employees quit. From our recent research, the top five reasons for staff to voluntarily leave their position are:

1. Unhappy with compensation/benefits for work performed
2. No recognition for a job performance/goals achieved
3. Too little training/coaching and feedback
4. Lack of communication (primarly with management)
5. Loss of confidence in company leadership

Will you lose over 1/3 of your good employees because of one or more of these reasons?

If you don't know the answer to that, you should. Many companies we've interviewed about using our W.A.V.E.S.™ Survey have actually confessed that they are "scared to see the results". We encourage all organizations to find out now before it's too late, otherwise they may find that they'll be spending 10 times more in money and time to replace employees than they would have spent to avoid the turnover in the first place.

Visit http://www.plotkingroup.com/Newsletter_Additional_Resources/PlotkinGroup-Article-JUN10-Reasons-Employees-Quit.php

for more information.

What can private corporations do to employees? Just about everything

Toni Bowers with Tech Republic writes an interesting. Details are at: http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/career/?p=1706&tag=nl.e101


In his new book Can they do that?, Lewis Maltby says that employees are often surprised at the reasons over which they can be fired.

With all that you hear today in the news about employees suing former employers, you’d think that it would be very difficult for an employer to actually fire someone. But the reality is different in the private sector.

In a recent interview on NPR, Maltby said, “Freedom of speech is protected by the First Amendment - but only where the government is concerned. What most Americans generally don’t know is that the Constitution doesn’t apply to private corporations at all.”

Private corporations can fire someone for almost anything. Maltby related an incident when a worker was fired for having a bumper sticker that expressed a political view that did not jibe with the CEO’s.

The only thing that a corporation cannot do is eavesdrop on a personal oral conversation. Anything else, Maltby said, “is open season.”

I’ve written before about how employers-potential and existing-are within legal limits to peruse individuals’ personal blogs or Facebook pages, and to watch what you put there. Maltby says employers do this regularly and can fire someone over what they see.

And it doesn’t stop there. In his book, Maltby relates stories of employer abuses that include tracking employees through cell phone GPS locators to placing hidden cameras in restrooms. He says that 20% of employers now require employees to agree before being hired not to go to court if the corporation violates their legal rights.

While most people would agree that a private company has the right to run itself any way it sees fit, you can see how this right could be abused. Maltby is pushing for the Bill of Rights to apply to the private sector. In the book appendixes, he provides sample letters to elected representatives and human rights organizations as well as an Employee Bill of Rights.

Employed women to outnumber men

Did you know that men make up about 82% of job losses so far? Employed women will soon outnumber employed men for the first time in U.S. history, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Employee perceptions of CUs have operations implications

A Filene Research Institute study concludes that employees' perceptions of their credit union may have implications for management about the credit union's operations in six areas.

The study, "Employee Perceptions of Credit Unions: Implications for Member Profitability," was the topic of a News Now story Sept. 24.

Further implications of the study's findings for senior management are also discussed, according to a review by the Texas Credit Union League (LoneStar Leaguer Dec. 3).

The six implications are:

1. Credit unions are different. If employees commit to what a credit union is, member outreach should be more successful. "It is one thing to claim, 'We have low interest rates on loans,' but is quite another to be able to say why."

2. Employees are "almost there." They are fairly committed to the idea of a credit union, and they almost unanimously agree that knowing about credit unions is important. Still, the shared understanding remains mostly implicit and is not readily articulated. When asked to explain credit unions in a face-to-face context, employees generally offer only small parts of the whole.

3. "Ours is not to reason why." Most employees do not see the credit union's characteristics as logically or causally connected. They associate different features with these but not in a clear fashion. The study suggests embedding causal ideas within a story or mythic framework to reach rank-and-file employees. This would give them a template for explaining credit unions to nonmembers.

4. Trust may be a hidden strength. "Trustworthiness" describes a credit union, but it did not figure prominently in the way employees talk about credit unions in face-to-face interviews--a missed opportunity for credit unions to build on trust as a primary differentiator. Trust may be a feature best expressed tangentially but it is an asset that should not be ignored, the study said.
5. Some employee groups are not as 'on board' as others. One such group is the most educated group. Many of these employees may see credit unions as substituting ideology and emotion for performance. They are more negative about credit unions' future, see more "dead wood" among fellow employees, and see deficiencies in efficiency, competence and professionalism.

6. Local institutional cultures matter. Employee commitment, consensus score, degree of trust and wanting to know about credit unions vary significantly by local credit union. That means local management styles and education programs can make a difference; these indicators rise and fall together, suggesting each influences the rest; and all are to some degree contagious in the sense that levels of commitment, trust and so one are self-propagating among employees.