Money is a convenient and overused excuse for turnover. It is rare that money alone causes the typical employee to leave.

Most employees would willingly take a little less money than they could make somewhere else if they find other things they value more in their work environment—challenge, developmental opportunities, friendships with peers and supervisors, flexibility, appreciation and other real benefits.

Thoughts to ponder;

Even in cases where employees are happy with the job, knowing that they are paid significantly below market can cause hard feelings and lead to turnover. Money is a natural and fundamental concern. As such, it often deserves serious, albeit painful, consideration and action by even the most cash-strapped organization.

Before you spend a penny on additional salary, benefits or other programs, it is important to find out specifically what is broken in your relationship with employees. If you don’t do this, you risk fixing the wrong things and wasting precious money, time, effort and good will. Here are a few data-gathering techniques that have worked well for me over the years:

Here is my logic with this concept;

Exit interviews

Find out what leads your employees to read want ads or accept a call from a recruiter in the first place.

Focus groups and surveys

There are a number of decent employee-opinion survey products commercially available. Learning to do a focus group is easily within the grasp of most HR professionals.

Retention interviews

Identify the employees you really, really need to keep. Sit down with them and discuss the company, their personal satisfaction, ideas to make their job even better than it is, and related topics.

One word of caution for all of these techniques: Don’t use them if you aren’t willing to listen to what people think. More important, if you are not willing to consider making changes, you are well advised not to ask. The “sugar high” of raised expectations quickly diminishes into all-time lows of employee morale if people think you aren’t listening.

You will find that the answers to turnover are not as elusive as you may think. They are fairly basic. The suggestions you harvest from employees will help you design the practical solutions you need and can afford.

As always, if I can ever be of any assistance to you or your organization, please call or write and I will respond immediately! Have a tremendous week. Regards, George F. Mancuso, CPC, CEO (AKA, The Gman)

Client Growth Consultants, Inc. George@ClientGrowthConsultants.com