Is ‘Turnover Armageddon’ Heading Your Way?

If your organization is like most, workers have been patient about compensation for several years of low or no raises. They understood that their organizations were squeezed by economic pressures, and they were also held back by general insecurity about changing jobs in tricky times.

But patience is wearing thin, and indications are that as employees’ confidence returns, many will be eager to move.

Unfortunately, these people may well be your high potential and key player employees. They are the ones who will get the first opportunities to move and the juiciest offers to do so.

What to Do

First of all, you need to assess your company’s compensation situation honestly. Where are your workers now in their pay relative to your competitors? If they are generally below average, you probably have a problem brewing.

• Is your situation of the past few years such that you believe there is likely pent up desire to move?
• Are there indicators that hiring in your industry is picking up?
• Are you actually losing people already?

If you think your employees may be ripe for the picking, take action now.

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HIPOs and Key Players

As a first priority, look to your high potential (HIPO) and key player employees.

Your HIPO employees represent the future of the company. But their loss would not necessarily have an immediate impact; after all, “potential” indicates that growth is needed.

Key employees are the ones whose departure would have an immediate and significant negative impact. They are not necessarily high level people. For example, a key player might be:

• A purchasing agent who has developed strong relationships with suppliers of difficult-to-find commodities;
• Top sales people, especially if the personal relationship between salesperson and customer is important; or
• A computer expert who is the only employee familiar with your legacy computer system.

Of course, some employees could be both key and high potential.

For all of these employees, it’s worth it to do an individual analysis. Where do each of them stand total rewards-wise in relation to your market. Depending on the job, your market might be narrowly defined to your industry (for example, a highly specialized ceramics engineer), or widely defined if the job is relatively similar across industries (for example, a financial analyst).

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Making the Monetary Move

If you find critical employees who would be attractive to outsiders and who are poorly paid relative to the market, you’ll probably want to address that as soon as you can. The company may not be able to raise the whole compensation system, but it should be able to do something for exceptional employees. What’s the cost going to be to the company if those employees leave?

In tomorrow’s Advisor, look for effective nonmonetary steps to boost engagement and retention of key players, plus an introduction to the new total training system for supervisors and managers, TrainingToday.