Topic: Turnover Case Study (fictional)
When a firm is struggling to recruit and retain employees, they must not only listen to
employee feedback, but understand what that feedback really means to the organization. A large public accounting firm reacted appropriately by requesting employee feedback that included the accounting staff’s dissatisfaction with the number of hours worked each week, salary, limited opportunities for career advancement, poor communication, and lack of recognition. These concerns are not just hygiene factors and have serious implications for the company that states they cannot implement change due to budget limits. They most likely do not need to hire more employees.
In the recruitment process, a recruiter conducts a job analysis
to compare the duties and responsibilities to the requirements in education and experience to ensure they are realistic and relevant to successful performance (Arthur, 2019). It only makes sense in light of the employees’ salary concerns that salary ranges should be investigated to fairly compensate them for the duties, responsibilities, education, and
experience. An analysis of competitors’ comparable position salaries should reveal if the firm is unfairly paying the employees. If the employees are not being paid fairly, then an analysis of the firm's pay structure and revenue distribution could provide relief to the budget to support increases to make the salaries competitive.
However, if the salaries are competitive, then the employees’ concerns are a perception of unfairness resulting from a lack of engagement. The employees’ other concerns about work-life balance, career opportunities, communication, and recognition are significant contributors to job satisfaction and employee engagement.
Engaged employees are committed to their job, department, organization, and career
(Arthur, 2019). The following are recommendations to improve this situation and positively impact the retention of the accounting staff.
Communicate and conduct scheduled performance discussions or evaluations (Arthur, 2019). These discussions should not only include performance measurement, but also explore employees’ growth and career goals, discuss how the firm can support them in their role and with their goals, recognize their accomplishments, and give the employee the opportunity to provide feedback and constructive criticism in return. Some organizations provide a career path map for their employees that posts open positions, includes the needed requirements for each position, and enables employees to apply or preference for future openings.
The extensive work hours could be directly resulting from a lack of productivity, which in turn results from a lack of engagement. Profit sharing is an excellent method that provides monetary incentive for employees. They will have more ownership in achieving objectives if there is a reward for their contributions. In this case, the payouts could be a percentage of salary based on hours worked in the quarter or annually. The employees’ perception of hours worked would be based more on objectives than on the hours in a week.
