There is a perpetual perceived link between turnover and pay, especially in the eyes of first-line supervisors who see employees walk out the door and can’t imagine it’s because of themselves. Pay becomes a target in part because it is tangible…and always controversial.
If we can safely presume high pay equals most essential, then there are at least 11 jobs in healthcare that are more important to retain than nurses who traditionally have a high rate of turnover. Yet these higher-paid workers almost never receive a Stay Interview or an assessment of their likelihood to stay.
We are now firmly in the midst of “The Great Resignation”, and the number of monthly quits have consistently exceeded their all-time highs. This gloomy picture would be incomplete, though, without looking beyond today, wondering how long the workforce clouds will stay dark. There are at least 10 reasons that forecast "The Great Resignation" as the new normal.
Google has announced they will reduce pay for those employees who have chosen to work permanently from home if their remote location has “lower labor costs than where their former offices are located”. In other words, Google will permit me to continue working for them remotely if I take a pay cut.
The heat is on for companies of all sizes to declare if they will require their employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19…risking that those refusing employees could lose their jobs.
I’m a workaholic…meaning I study work…so come join me if reservation wage is a new term for you. It’s new to me, too.
We learned a new trick at home this past weekend, that when we turned on the captions the shows got better. It cleared up jumbled dialogue and we paid more attention to the background notes. Things didn’t notice before that add to the experience but still don’t compete with the primary story line, the continuously-developing plot, and the stars of the show. And the stars of your must-cut-turnover show are your first line supervisors.
So now comes new information in the past seven days that drives home that this wacky idea of 3.2% unemployment by year end is real. And as hard as it is to retain your best current workers, retaining is a better strategy than recruiting…against the headwinds of all that is listed above. How does one recruit better when unemployment is becoming 3.2%? And maybe even worse in your local market?
Working From Home is hardly new so any predictions about its strengths and weaknesses have already been proven, just not the grand scale that we might soon see. But having said that, WFH during the pandemic is not the same as regular, organized, we-all-buy-into-this WFH that we will see in the future.
Several years ago, AngloGold Ashanti invited me to help them lower their turnover rates in African gold mines…for jobs a full four kilometers underground. AngloGold Ashanti’s turnover situation was just like many of ours. Too few workers available, the jobs had their shortcomings, and their workers didn’t stay.