For a great many people all throughout the country, the workplace is far from what it should be. This is something that holds true through many different places of work in many different industries and for many different people, as many executive HR search firms have been able to attest to. After all, these executive HR search firms likely already know that employee retention rates are quite troubling indeed, to say the very least.
And troubling they are, so much so that the generation of Millennial workers has actually be nicknamed the job hopping generation. This name is not without cause, as up to 60% of all Millennials who are currently a part of the workforce have even stated that they would leave their current position for a better one at the drop of a hat, something that shows a lack of job loyalty to their current roles. And the June of the year of 2015 alone saw more than two and a half million people leaving their jobs on a voluntary basis, a number that marked a more than one quarter jump from the June of 2014, the year prior. In the time that has passed us by since, executive HR search firms and various other outplacement companies have noticed a continuing increase in people leaving their jobs.
And it is important to note that there are many reasons such poor job retention has become all too much of the norm. For one thing, far too few people feel as motivated as they should in their respective places of work. As a matter of fact, more than three quarters of all employees in this country (around 80% of them, to be just a little bit more exact) feel that they are not being as motivated as possible to do their best work, citing a lack of involvement and encouragement from their bosses and superiors. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.
In addition to this already noteworthy problem, it has been found that more than one third of the top executives actually feel that hiring the wrong person for the job (a failed skills match) is the top reason behind these poor job retention rates as cited by executive HR search firms and human resources recruiters. After all, hiring a person without the necessary skills for any given job is simply setting them up for failure, and is likely to provide them with a less than ideal working experience, as well. Unclear performance objectives also play a role, with a similar percentage of these top executives believing that this is a critical factor in the poor job retention rates cited to us by executive HR search firms all throughout the country in its entirety.
But while executive HR search firms know that employee retention is very much a problem, it is also known that there are a number of solutions that can tackle this problem. For instance, including more diversity in the workplace has been found to be tremendously beneficial. Even just putting more focus on gender diversity can actually improve the output of the workplace by as much as a full 15%. And improving ethnic diversity can do this by as much as a full 35%, in comparison to places of work that have not been striving for diversity. And such initiatives are becoming more and more commonplace, with more than 5% of all Fortune 500 CEOs now women, something that has never before been seen.
Of course, employee happiness initiatives are also critical and therefore so are employee recognition programs. These employee recognition programs are successful at increasing employee happiness more than 85% of the time, making them valuable tools. After all, it has been found that an increase in employee happiness is linked to an increase in the quality of work – and the amount of work, for that matter – that any given employee is able to produce. Therefore, employee happiness should be a top priority for just about any given place of work here and all throughout the United States.
