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Seventy-six percent of employees are looking for new employment
opportunities, according to the 2005 U.S. Job Recovery and Retention
Survey released by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) and
CareerJournal.com. Sixty-five percent of HR professionals indicated they
were concerned about the voluntary resignations at their organizations. To
prevent a mass exodus, almost half of the organizations surveyed are
implementing special retention processes to keep their employees. The
percentage of organizations implementing special retention processes had
increased to 49 percent in 2005 compared with 35 percent in 2004. HR
professionals have found that competitive salary, career development
opportunities, promoting qualified employees and flexible work schedules
are among the best employee retention strategies. Although salary
increases are often perceived as the most valuable incentive for employees
to stay with their current jobs, they are also among the most difficult to
provide because although the economy is improving, organizations are still
somewhat cautious to increase spending.
“The loss of talent has many implications for a company, especially
when the organization’s core, middle-management level employees leave in
large numbers,” says Tony Lee, publisher, CareerJournal.com. “HR
professionals are challenged with creatively engaging the people in their
organizations, which will be a difficult task since more than
three-quarters of employees are either actively or passively engaged in a
job search.”
“Offering competitive salaries for the market is important to
employees, however, compensation alone is not sufficient for a complete
retention strategy,” said Susan R. Meisinger, SPHR, president and CEO of
SHRM. “Career development opportunities and work/life balance are
important for today’s employee, and employers must consider these types of
issues in their retention practices if they want to develop successful
organizations.”
There are many strategies other than financial incentives that
organizations can employ to keep their employees. Creating programs that
help employees see their potential for growth within an organization,
working with managers to develop career paths for non-management-level
employees, creating a more favorable work environment, and implementing
better work/life practices such as flextime and telecommuting can have an
impact on reducing employee turnover rates.
In the survey, employees and HR professionals agreed on the top reasons
employees left their organizations—better compensation elsewhere (41
percent of employees, 50 percent of HR professionals), career opportunity
elsewhere (34 percent of employees, 51 percent of HR professionals) and
dissatisfaction with potential for career development at organization (25
percent of employees, 31 percent of HR professionals). About one-quarter
(23 percent) of employees stated that being ready for a new experience was
an important reason to begin or increase the intensity of their job
search.
SHRM and CareerJournal.com conducted the survey to determine opinions
about job recovery and the effectiveness of retention strategies from the
perspective of both HR professionals and employees. The survey questions
were e-mailed to randomly selected SHRM members, yielding 435 responses
from HR professionals, and a convenience sample of CareerJournal.com
visitors who comprise the employee sample, bearing 465 responses.
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