By Al Greenwood
Staff writer
The Fayetteville Observer
When Jack Smalley started his first day at a new job, he spent three hours waiting in the lobby.
Smalley quit that same day and returned to his old employer.
Companies often have themselves to blame when they can’t keep employees, Smalley said. His experience was one of several examples he gave during a presentation Thursday about employee retention.
The seminar was sponsored by Express Personnel Services. Smalley is a consultant for Express Business Solutions, a subsidiary.
Retention starts by hiring good employees, Smalley said. Too often, companies hire people too quickly, without considering their style or their attitude. At times, the most qualified person is sometimes not the best one for the job because he clashes, he said. “You can teach knowledge, but you can’t teach style,” Smalley said.
Companies create barriers that keep out good employees, he said. Companies should eliminate college-degree requirements from 10 percent of their jobs. “There are nondegree people who are confident, qualified and who will stay with you their entire careers,” he said.
Once the applicant accepts the job, treat him well on his first day at work, Smalley said. Often, the opposite happens. When Smalley’s wife started a job at a hospital, it forgot to give her a parking pass. On her first day, she walked four city blocks in the rain because she couldn’t enter the hospital’s parking deck.
Smalley had other horror stories of employees’ first days on the job:
For overall retention, companies should hold their managers accountable, Smalley said. About half of all workers leave their jobs because of bad bosses. “Like the boss, and you usually like your job.”
Bad bosses make excessive demands, work under a series of crises and want employees to be available at all hours, he said. Remove such managers, and a company can improve retention by at least 25 percent, Smalley said.
Employees also leave jobs because they don’t receive what they consider proper recognition, Smalley said. Chick-fil-A began recognizing good managers by sharing half of the stores’ profits. It reduced turnover from 300 percent to one of the lowest rates in the fast-food industry.
For many companies, the salaries of good employees are only slightly above average, Smalley said. Companies should pay those employees a premium — at the expense of poor-performing workers, many of whom don’t deserve raises.
Companies can add small perks that can keep employees on the job, he said. Construction Equipment Co. gives children of its employees $50 savings bonds each time they get straight As. Others let employees choose their own titles – Smalley knows of a “vice president of fun” at one company.
One boss visited an employee’s wife at the hospital after she gave birth to a child, he said. The wife now won’t let her husband quit.