The Price of Loyalty in the Workforce

For most business owners and leaders their biggest asset as well as their biggest headache is their staff.

Love them or not, they’re the key to your business’ current and future success. An occupational hazard therefore is the resignation letter, some we don’t mourn others we do, although the mantra “you always replace with better” can prove a soothing thought.

For us the departures that hurt the most are those with no motive other than a financial gain, happily all but one of our leavers in 2014 has been to take on grand new plans, baby birds leaving the nest if you like. But it’s the others, those who leave without such reason that leave you wondering what went wrong or what prompted the move.

Now an international survey sheds some light on the employee mindset.

The survey from global advisory company CEB paints a very different behavioural picture of the worldwide employee.

Perhaps surprisingly, and worryingly for those businesses faced with a ‘counter-offer’ decision to make, 41% of those surveyed overall were actively seeking new employment. Although this differed by region, the lowest was almost a third of the workforce with the UK coming out at 40% of staff looking for pastures new:

• India 55.8%
• South Africa 51.9%
• UK 39.9%
• Germany 33.0%
• Japan 30.2%

Showing even more variance was the average compensation change that would trigger a move. Survey wide this was 8.6% a decrease from 10.3% in 2013. As the recession has lifted in many areas, the ‘fear’ factor of job security has dissipated allowing the appetite for taking on the risk of a job move for ‘better’ pay packets to rise.

In the UK employees would move for a quarter of the remuneration change that the employees from the most demanding countries Brazil and Indonesia would need:

• Indonesia 20.6%
• Brazil 20.1%
• South Africa 17.1%
• China 12.0%
• France 8.6%
• Nordic Nations 6.7%
• Spain 5.9%
• UK 5.3%
• Italy 4.5%
• Germany 3.9%
• Belgium 2.8%
• Netherlands 2.8%

The survey also measured the ‘hygiene’ factors that led people to change jobs. In the UK this proved to be:

1. The much fabled work-life balance
2. Location,
3. Stability
4. Respect.
5. Compensation

So over a third of our employees are actively looking to leave, they’d do so for just a 5% pay rise and would tell you it’s for work/life balance.

Now we know!