| |
Benefit
#5
 
Employee turnover
can easily cost over $100,000. This includes exit interviews, severance
pay, hiring costs and lost productivity while the new hire is learning
the job. One manufacturer estimated the loss of a salaried journeyman
machinist costs $102,796, an automobile company’s human resource
manager $133,803, and a fast-food chain store manager $21,931. These
costs alone are surprising. Then add on top of these numbers the
indirect costs like loss of intellectual capital, decreased morale,
increased employee stress and negative reputation.15
Wendy Goff-McKewen
of Blue Cross Blue Shield in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina says,
"If the employees are happy, they will tend to stay with the company."
After a difficult time of growth and the addition of an evening
shift, staff workloads were increased. When invited to a seminar
encouraging fun in the work place, their response was an impatient,
"I don't have time for this." But after participating, those same
employees said they came to work the next day with a new attitude.
Yet, the skeptics still didn’t see the value in spending money on
something that may make people too accustomed to fun at work. The
vice president’s response to this fear, "They might [become accustomed
to fun], but they will not want to leave."
 In
the 1997 National Study of the Changing Workforce, 2,877
employees in blue- and white-collar jobs were surveyed. The quality
of the jobs (based on the personal intrinsic satisfaction an employee
gains from their job) and the support employees felt within the
work place, are more powerful predictors of job satisfaction, commitment
to their employers and retention. These characteristics are far
more important predictors of productivity than pay and benefits
if the compensation package is generally competitive with the marketplace.16
Sometimes the
quality of a job is tied to its intrinsic value to the community
and ability to make a difference in peoples’ lives. These aspects
are meaningful to employees. The work force at a retail outlet that
sells dessert food truly believes that sometimes something sweet
really made someone’s day. They appreciate the several large community
contributions the company is dedicating to making. When employees
feel they are part of a positive influence, they become more committed
to the role they play in the company.
|
|
