I am brought into many organizations to reimagine their hiring and employee development process. It is important for me to come to some foundational understandings about what job seekers are looking for in their next opportunity. Almost without fail, a derisive comment is made that “new employees are only here for more money.” I’d like to set that idea to rest with this blog post. Let’s talk about it in three separate ways:
- Think this through: If you believe that people only come to or stay at an organization because it pays the most money, and your organization is not currently the highest paying employer in your geographic radius, then by your OWN logic, all of your employees should have left already for higher paying jobs.
- Pay has not ranked higher than #5 in reasons that people stay in a job in any survey I have seen in the past 10 years. Culture, relationships, development, and a schedule that makes their life work at home are consistently more important than money.
- “Bad boss” has been the #1 reason that people leave jobs across America consistently for the last decade in survey after survey.
So, with all that evidence readily available to managers and business owners, why do they continue to insist that money is the biggest reason that they cannot get and retain great employees? My observation is that what THEY believe (and have believed) is most important in a job does not align with today’s workforce.
For most managers who are 50 years old or older, SECURITY was the most important aspect of a job for them. With jobs being hard to come by during the 1990’s, and widespread job layoffs in the early 2000’s (the “Tech Wreck”), 2008’s financial crash, and the uncertainty surrounding the pandemic of 2020, job loss and the inability to find another similar job was very real for them.
Today, FREEDOM, FLEXIBILITY and FIT are the purest motivations for jobseekers. With 2.1 open jobs available for every unemployed person in America today, the ability to find a new job is not nearly the concern it has been in the past. Are these new studies right about the current motivations of employees? The answer is as close as a lunchroom conversation with each employee you have hired in the past 2 years. Tom Peters would call that… “Management by walking around.”
If you are looking for insight or specific action steps to grow a process within your organization to Win the War for Talent, please reach out. It’s my passion to help companies solve their talent issues, whether that is finding the right talent or retaining and developing that talent. With the right processes in place, your organization can grow and thrive even more!
