There’s always been a fine line between the perceptions of employees and employers on retention.
It becomes a constant dilemma faced by employers to understand what it takes to keep their retention rate up. Less than 15% of over 15,000 Malaysian youth stated they liked their job enough to stay.
Malaysia previously recorded the second highest involuntary turnover rate at 6.0% and third highest voluntary turnover rate at 9.5% in South East Asia.
A survey with data from 230,000 employees across 142 countries found only 13% of employees worldwide are “engaged” in their jobs, meaning that they put effort into their work and take time to interact with colleagues. The rest expressed their wishes to switch companies should a better offer comes their way.
Since 2012, the top three drivers of attraction and retention for Malaysia have remained the same.
Namely, it all comes down to base pay or salary, job security and learning & development to attract employees. To keep them, base pay or salary, career advancement opportunities and their relationship with supervisors or managers are key.
But pay, career progression and better job opportunities aren’t the only factors employees look out for when it comes to deciding whether or not they stay with a company.
Here are 4 other reasons why you’d would say yea or nay to staying with a business, both for the bosses and the employees out there.
1) Bonuses
In a press release, Jobstreet announced the results of their recent survey among employers and employees. They investigated if having high bonuses mattered when it came to retention.
58% of employers stated that bonuses don’t actually play a role in keeping employees. The employees disagreed.
72% of employees said bonuses matter in making them stay. Many choose to stay in their current company because of their bonus schemes. They would consider moving to another job if they were given higher bonuses elsewhere.
2) Annual Leave
A survey in 2014 showed that while monetary rewards are important to keep employees happy and loyal, it wasn’t all. Other factors that are critical in attracting, retaining and sustaining employee engagement on long term basis are:
- Showing them a clear sense of career progression
- Giving them learning opportunities
- Communicating with employees on their “total rewards” package
One part of the “total rewards” package is the amount of annual leave. 65% of employees mentioned that the amount of days they receive for their annual leave affects their decision to stay with a company or not.
3) Extra Benefits
In early 2014, there was a shocking exposé from BP employees who revealed that their company was cutting back employee pensions by up to 75%, which caused many long-standing employees to leave.
So even if employees may like their job, they won’t hesitate to leave if they feel like they’re being cheated out of what’s rightfully theirs.
Employees have mentioned that stripping their benefits away would make their interest in the job diminish. Cutting things like pensions or reducing bonuses will cause some turnover.
Employers have to maintain a consistency in bonuses and benefits to ensure that their people feel like they are well taken care of. If not, their employees are probably going to start considering other options for jobs.
4) Working Hours
Although they may be happy with their career progression at a company, employees do feel burned out if their working hours total to 70-hour weeks regularly.
But with the workload piled up, employees will begin to feel fed up by not being able to do the things they want outside work such as see their families, and take breaks from an exhausting schedule.
Most employers tackle this by ensuring employees know beforehand the working conditions they might face, including a reminder about their working hours. Employers have also found that focusing on work done instead of hours worked can go a long way to keep employees happy.
Feature Image Credit: ahmad al homaid on flickr.com
