Work Matters

Tag: War for Talent

  • Dear Bosses: Is It Your Last Chance To Reverse Your Vile Ways? Or Is It Too Late?

    I was delighted to read that, finally, we saw some serious job growth last month in the United States, with 162,000 new jobs added in March.  When this bright news is blended with the recent Conference Board study showing that employee dissatisfaction is at an all time high (less than half of Americans are satisfied with their jobs, down from 61% in 2005, and workers under 25 are especially dissatisfied), it suggests that a lot of companies and bosses better come to grips with the fact that many of their best people are laying in wait, patiently grinding out the days, but will dash for the exits when the job market gets better. 

    As much research shows — by Gallup and many academics too — people quit bosses, not organizations for the most part. If you are a boss and believe that your people love you and will never leave you, well, it just might be a good time to look in the mirror.   As I've discussed here before, the very act of wielding power can make you blind to how your subordinates are really responding to you.  And, of course, given the lack of options, many smart employees (especially those with emotional control and long-term time perspectives) realize that the wisest strategy is to stay on the good side of a bad boss to avoid negative performance reviews and the demotions or firings that often follow — and so they will get good recommendations when they try to land a better job (and boss) down the road.  This means, dear bosses, that you may well be victim to a game of mutual deception, where you are deluding yourself into believing that you are great at your job, but if you really knew how it felt to work for you, you would be shocked to discover that you are seen as an asshole, incompetent, or both.  AND your most able employees are helping you sustain this delusion to protect themselves in the short-term and keep their options open in the long-term.

    After these years of cost-cutting and treating employees as if they are damn lucky to have a job, we are seeing hints that the balance of power is starting to swing back back to employees. A lot of companies and bosses have treated their people badly during the rough last few years — doing far damage than is necessary (as I have written about in Harvard Business Review article and talk about in this related video on the McKinsey site).  It is probably too late for many lousy employers and managers out there to reverse course, as even if they try to do so, their people will  rightfully see it is an inauthentic ploy.  But a good start for many companies might be to try to figure out who your worst bosses are and make an extra effort to reform or (if necessary) remove them as quickly as you  can.  And even if you have been a truly good boss — or good company — during these tough times, it might be a good time to take stock and consider how to treat your people even better and find out what they really need to be happy and perform well on their jobs — and do everything within your power to give to them. 

    I would be very curious to hear from readers: If you are a boss, are you stepping up your efforts to treat your people well?   What about those of you out there with good bosses?  Is the research right?  Have you built up loyalty that will persist when the good times return?   And what about those of you with crummy bosses, have you been waiting, patiently, to politely tell your vile overseer to take this job and shove it when something better comes along?

  • You Better Start Treating Your People Right, Or The Best Will Be Leaving Soon

    This week's Economist has a story called Hating What You Do, which presents a rather discouraging but well-documented argument that, since the downturn began, a lot more people are a lot more unhappy with their jobs.  For example, to quote the story, "A survey by the Centre for Work-Life Policy, an American consultancy,
    found that between June 2007 and December 2008 the proportion of
    employees who professed loyalty to their employers slumped from 95% to
    39%; the number voicing trust in them fell from 79% to 22%." Ouch.

    Certainly, some of this unhappiness is due to the fear, bad news, pay cuts, loss of benefits, objective loss of job security, job overload (an effect of layoffs on survivors), and other bad experiences provoked by these hard times.  But there is huge variation in how well or badly different organizations have treated their people during the past couple years.  The Economist article refers indirectly to my HBR article on being a Good Boss in a Bad Economy (see the McKinsey interview for free). If you recall from my prior posts, my basic argument was that there is a big difference between what organizations and bosses must do to survive during tough times and how they do it — and the keys to doing dirty work (like pay cuts and layoffs) well include providing people as much prediction, understanding, control, and compassion as possible in the process.

    Well, now that we seem to be seeing early signs that, within a year or perhaps less, many companies will be hiring again (in fact, I notice that Google is back to hiring already, and they did some layoffs earlier in the year), your chickens will be coming home to roost soon. If you are a boss or organization that has treated your people well despite the challenges, the return of the so-called "war for talent" will be great for you because your best people won't run for the door when the job market starts heating-up again and you will have an easy time recruiting great people because, after all, the good word spreads. 

    But if you have treated people like dirt during the tough times (for a horror story, see here), have been inept about how you have implemented tough decisions (see here) or have simply been clueless about your people's perspective during these tough times (see here), you may have been able to keep great people working for you during these tough times and to hire some of the best. You can be sure, however, that they have told their friends about how much your company or you suck.  They are waiting for things to get better, and perhaps encouraged by the signs the labor market is coming back, are probably doing their jobs extra well these days to enhance their reputation for that coming job search.  So you may be fooling yourself into believing all is well when it is not.

    In my view, if you have been nasty, inept, or greedy about how you've treated people during the downturn, you will deserve everything you get when, as things start getting better, your best people start leaving in droves and the best candidates not only turn down your job offers, they don't even bother to apply because your reputation stinks.  Looking at it from your perspective, however, you've might have just enough time to salvage your reputation if you begin reversing your vile ways right now.  And, if you've treated your people well during these tough times, cranking up the respect, attention, and — if you can afford it (I know it is tough) — your pay and benefits right now just a bit could pay huge dividends down the road.