6 ms·

This is a common response to this issue, but I think there is a logical flaw in it. Employers don't know ahead of time which employees will leave and which wil

This is a common response to this issue, but I think there is a logical flaw in it. Employers don't know ahead of time which employees will leave and which will stay. In order to improve their employee retention, employers have to pay _all_ of their employees more, not just the ones that eventually will leave. This changes the math entirely. For example, suppose it costs 50% extra to replace someone who leaves. In retrospect, sure, giving the sole employee who leaves a 10% raise each year to retain them makes sense. But if you have to give all of your employees a 10% raise per year, just to retain that one person, it doesn't make financial sense anymore. To be clear I'm not endorsing this system at all! But from a pure financial perspective it makes sense to me and is why, I suspect, it persists.

foobiekr 4y ago
I would agree, but employers actually usually do know who is a flight risk.
peteradio 4y ago
Presumably not everyone is as valuable or risky.
- bonestamp2 4y ago
  This is exactly how we look at it. Those who are more valuable get larger annual raises. Also, during a high turnover period around a year ago, we even bumped a few people up mid year when we normally do salary increases at the beginning of the year. These folks were very happy and I think it earned a lot of trust that we looked at the market rates, determined they were underpaid, and made sure they were at least getting what they'd get paid elsewhere.
  - agentwiggles 4y ago
    There is nothing like an unexpected raise to make a person feel some serious company loyalty. I started a position at a new company a few years back, run by a friend and senior colleague of mine. He had been with me at the previous company and had observed while I fought and fought to get a raise to market rates in that position. He called me a few months into the gig and told me that he felt I should be making more than my starting salary and that I was getting a fairly substantial raise effective immediately. I can't describe how good that felt, after having had to struggle to demonstrate my value at the previous gig only to be met with bureaucracy at every turn. I'm still with that company and genuinely love working with them. I make a pretty nice salary, and though I'm sure I could easily get a 20% raise to jump ship, I'm finally in a place where I can say "nah, I'm happy where I am" and not feel like I'm giving something up.
andrewflnr 4y ago
It's almost like you need to identify which employees are key contributors and pay them appropriately. Imagine that.
- endisneigh 4y ago
  Easier said then done. Firstly it requires for you to know what you’re doing is both a key project and something in which paying more would be more likely to result in its completion.
  - luckylion 4y ago
    Is it though? I've never worked as an actual employee, but I'm working in long-time contracts as a freelancer with companies. I've always found it pretty easy to tell who was carrying a project and who was dead weight. Might be different and harder to calculate for new projects, but for existing ones that are maintained, observing who gets asked when weird things happen and who solves the strange issues usually identified the people who were instrumental. If someone is off a week and nothing moves, that's someone you probably want to keep (and probably also a situation you want to resolve, because that's not a good thing).
    - s1artibartfast 4y ago
      Managers responsible for promoting usually aren't in the trenches and getting honest feedback is actually hard. When asking people about the performance of their peers, you usually get equally positive feedback unless folks are fucking up. You have a good point though. Perhaps managers shouldn't be asking for feedback on specific individuals, but ask individuals who they go to for help and mentoring.
    - cloverich 4y ago
      What you are describing is actually a rare skill / talent. Most people (including managers) do not possess it, IME.
- dan-robertson 4y ago
eftychis 4y ago
I disagree related to the SF Bay Area and the Tech world specifically. It is usually written in the wall who is going to leave if things do not change. Now you could say the upper management can't read the wall, and the middle management might not want to share what has been stated -- or they kid themselves.
duped 4y ago
Good managers and HR leaders will recognize when people are teetering on leaving. Not always, but I've known a few who have given raises to keep people around and knew that others were planning on leaving before they announced it. In a healthy organization you can have frank conversations. Or even ambiguous ones. It's just rare.
datavirtue 4y ago
"Employers don't know ahead of time which employees will leave and which will stay." That is their fault. I used to work in a well managed company. It was never a surprise when someone left as career progression was always an open topic between colleagues and supervisors. You don't know when people are going to disappear if they are crouching and ducking around every corner to avoid management.
raducu 4y ago
> For example, suppose it costs 50% extra to replace someone who leaves. In retrospect, sure, giving the sole employee who leaves a 10% raise each year to retain them makes sense. But if you have to give all of your employees a 10% raise per year, just to retain that one person, it doesn't make financial sense anymore. Yeah, so basically this argument is realpolitik, machiavellianism, game theory -- things that work 9/10 years, bring in profits but have enormous hidden costs that ravage companies/economies/countries in that 1/10, 1/50, 1/100 years. The argument is "be a dick as much as you can get away with, because people are sheep and being a dick is a virtue actually". Until a lot of people start being dicks, then we cry about the long lost art of not being dicks to eachother.
phpisthebest 4y ago
>Employers don't know ahead of time which employees will leave and which will stay I may be a bad example, but I can assure you every employer I have ever left new I was unhappy in my role before I left. I always have frank and open conversations with my managers about my expectations for growth, wages, etc. These are not Ultimatums, but more "In 5 years I would like to be" type conversations. Now as a manager I have gotten similar feedback from people that work from me, sometimes you have to listen closely to understand what they are saying in reality as many are not as direct as I am, but the feedback is there I think managers just simply ignore it in most cases
justsocrateasin 4y ago
Yes but sometimes they do - at my last job at a large corporation I was paid 80% below the median rate for an engineer in my area/YoE/etc. - I threatened I would quit and showed them a counter offer that was 30% more than what I was currently making and they said "sorry nothing we can do" so I quit and found a better job.

foobiekr 4y ago

I would agree, but employers actually usually do know who is a flight risk.

peteradio 4y ago

Presumably not everyone is as valuable or risky.

bonestamp2 4y ago
This is exactly how we look at it. Those who are more valuable get larger annual raises. Also, during a high turnover period around a year ago, we even bumped a few people up mid year when we normally do salary increases at the beginning of the year. These folks were very happy and I think it earned a lot of trust that we looked at the market rates, determined they were underpaid, and made sure they were at least getting what they'd get paid elsewhere.
- agentwiggles 4y ago
  There is nothing like an unexpected raise to make a person feel some serious company loyalty. I started a position at a new company a few years back, run by a friend and senior colleague of mine. He had been with me at the previous company and had observed while I fought and fought to get a raise to market rates in that position. He called me a few months into the gig and told me that he felt I should be making more than my starting salary and that I was getting a fairly substantial raise effective immediately. I can't describe how good that felt, after having had to struggle to demonstrate my value at the previous gig only to be met with bureaucracy at every turn. I'm still with that company and genuinely love working with them. I make a pretty nice salary, and though I'm sure I could easily get a 20% raise to jump ship, I'm finally in a place where I can say "nah, I'm happy where I am" and not feel like I'm giving something up.

andrewflnr 4y ago

It's almost like you need to identify which employees are key contributors and pay them appropriately. Imagine that.

endisneigh 4y ago
Easier said then done. Firstly it requires for you to know what you’re doing is both a key project and something in which paying more would be more likely to result in its completion.
- luckylion 4y ago
  Is it though? I've never worked as an actual employee, but I'm working in long-time contracts as a freelancer with companies. I've always found it pretty easy to tell who was carrying a project and who was dead weight. Might be different and harder to calculate for new projects, but for existing ones that are maintained, observing who gets asked when weird things happen and who solves the strange issues usually identified the people who were instrumental. If someone is off a week and nothing moves, that's someone you probably want to keep (and probably also a situation you want to resolve, because that's not a good thing).
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    Managers responsible for promoting usually aren't in the trenches and getting honest feedback is actually hard. When asking people about the performance of their peers, you usually get equally positive feedback unless folks are fucking up. You have a good point though. Perhaps managers shouldn't be asking for feedback on specific individuals, but ask individuals who they go to for help and mentoring.
  - cloverich 4y ago
    What you are describing is actually a rare skill / talent. Most people (including managers) do not possess it, IME.
dan-robertson 4y ago

eftychis 4y ago

I disagree related to the SF Bay Area and the Tech world specifically. It is usually written in the wall who is going to leave if things do not change. Now you could say the upper management can't read the wall, and the middle management might not want to share what has been stated -- or they kid themselves.

duped 4y ago

Good managers and HR leaders will recognize when people are teetering on leaving. Not always, but I've known a few who have given raises to keep people around and knew that others were planning on leaving before they announced it. In a healthy organization you can have frank conversations. Or even ambiguous ones. It's just rare.

datavirtue 4y ago

"Employers don't know ahead of time which employees will leave and which will stay." That is their fault. I used to work in a well managed company. It was never a surprise when someone left as career progression was always an open topic between colleagues and supervisors. You don't know when people are going to disappear if they are crouching and ducking around every corner to avoid management.

raducu 4y ago

> For example, suppose it costs 50% extra to replace someone who leaves. In retrospect, sure, giving the sole employee who leaves a 10% raise each year to retain them makes sense. But if you have to give all of your employees a 10% raise per year, just to retain that one person, it doesn't make financial sense anymore. Yeah, so basically this argument is realpolitik, machiavellianism, game theory -- things that work 9/10 years, bring in profits but have enormous hidden costs that ravage companies/economies/countries in that 1/10, 1/50, 1/100 years. The argument is "be a dick as much as you can get away with, because people are sheep and being a dick is a virtue actually". Until a lot of people start being dicks, then we cry about the long lost art of not being dicks to eachother.

phpisthebest 4y ago

>Employers don't know ahead of time which employees will leave and which will stay I may be a bad example, but I can assure you every employer I have ever left new I was unhappy in my role before I left. I always have frank and open conversations with my managers about my expectations for growth, wages, etc. These are not Ultimatums, but more "In 5 years I would like to be" type conversations. Now as a manager I have gotten similar feedback from people that work from me, sometimes you have to listen closely to understand what they are saying in reality as many are not as direct as I am, but the feedback is there I think managers just simply ignore it in most cases

justsocrateasin 4y ago

Yes but sometimes they do - at my last job at a large corporation I was paid 80% below the median rate for an engineer in my area/YoE/etc. - I threatened I would quit and showed them a counter offer that was 30% more than what I was currently making and they said "sorry nothing we can do" so I quit and found a better job.