Employee ah, employee....what do you want?

Last month & this month, my current company encounters a total of 6 people resigning. Another 3 thinking of resigning....That's really bad.

I've worked in multiple sizes of company before; small, medium and big.
Some with proper system and some without.
Some are doing competitively great and some are on the sun-set industry.
Some are managed by caring bosses & managers and some are just taking advantage of employees.

Well, finding talents is a difficult task today. Retaining them is even more difficult.

Out of my own journey talking to people as an employee, I've summarised what normally employees are looking for when they work in a company; it doesn't matter whether it has system or not, big or small.

1) Career path - Nobody wants to work forever as an executive or trainee level. The issue is whether the company has a plan to move up the employee on a career ladder or they just want to maintain the "tradition". Another issue is whether the employee is equipped with the skills for the new tasks. Budget allocation from a company in training might be a good idea!

2) Leadership - Manage by using our Head, Lead by using our Heart. Management is more on a Left-Brain area while Leadership is more on a Right-Brain stuff. We have to balance between;
- Looking at the big picture vs. Looking at the details.
- Task-oriented vs. People-oriented.
- Intelligence vs. Imagination.
- Instincts vs. Analysis
- Influence vs. Authority

Can we learn something from the managers / directors or we are just merely working like a robot?

3) Reward - Can you imagine cost of living keep going up and the range of salary remain the same today as compared to 5 - 10 years ago? Nowadays even a chicken rice / economy rice costs around RM4.50 - RM5.50, depending on the location. A typical malaysian car costs around RM40k - RM60k and people normally can afford to buy if the repayment period is drag up to 7 or 9 years. A mid-class apartment / condo costs around RM200k - RM300k....developer's price! Upon completion, perhaps rising up to RM300k - RM400k.....for an empty units excluding furnishing, renovation & decoration.

To me, salary comprises of 3 parts;
- Costs of Living
- Employee's ability
- Employee's performance

We can't just pay a standard rate for fresh graduate RM1,500 - RM1,800 / mth as if it is the same as 10 years back!

4) Appreciation - this is the most significant factor. Being acknowledged and felt we are part of the organisation is most important. Confront privately, compliment publicly. I've seen a boss that wanted to cut short a meeting duration by telling the employee, "Just tell me the bad news or problems faced, skip the good news!". Or "I don't care what are you going to do, just get it done!"

Well, that boss definitely save lots of time but not realising in long term, he is wasting more time by not listening & appreciating staff as he needed to train, re-train, train & retrain due to the frequent movement of people leaving & people coming in. The worst thing happen is when the employees felt they are a commodity instead of human being!

Whether a company wants to keep hiring new people or maintaining the talented employee for future growth will depend largely on the company's direction, mission & culture.

When Starbucks re-define their company mission from:

"WE ARE NOT A COFFEE BUSINESS SERVING PEOPLE....BUT A PEOPLE BUSINESS SERVING COFFEE!", whatever they do or decide will be more people-oriented and not coffee-oriented.

Eventually, it boils down to the Directors or Founders mindset of setting up the business.

What's the purpose of a particular business is being set up?
I've wrote another note on The Purpose of Building A Business.