The cost of losing a good employee is a minimum of $23K and almost one years salary, if you hire and get it wrong. A study by AHRI* of more than 1,500 human resources professionals has revealed the cost to hire an employee has more than doubled over the last 12 months. The loss of IP, customer relationships, team morale, productivity, stakeholder engagement and time to reappoint and induct is enormous. The current creeping inflation, talent shortages as companies are also accelerating growth plans, post pandemic. Now more than ever it is critical to find ways to engage your employees.

Workplace motivators appear in many forms and ironically we like to use the acronym FORM to categorise workplace motivators:

F = Flexibility. Allowing staff to have flexibility outside of work commitments such as family, health, personal finance, cultural and or religious engagements is helpful. If an employee feels supported with time for outside activities, the employee will be more focused and committed when working on the job and will go the extra mile, with after hours meetings, when required.

O = Occupation is everything – think of career challenge tools to support the employee: mentors, career path opportunities, further career studies. Allow employees to feel supported, heard and mentally stimulated.

R = Respect. Build trust and engagement by listening, to ignite employee creativity, show appreciation, encourage input and don’t micromanage. Focus on facts and results, rather than the process. Publicly recognise employees on their achievements, celebrating birthdays; providing positive reinforcement.

M = Money is important, but not the only factor to engagement. Nowadays we are finding the first question about a role is “where are they located and are there working from home options? Remuneration is still important. People need to feel their time is rewarded accordingly. Your capacity to pay will depend upon your business cash-flow. Be creative with performance incentives, bonuses and rewards to motivate and attract talent.

When thinking about making jobs sticky, think about making good FORM in the job. Track employee productivity and identify who stands out, then invest in those employees by providing these aspects. Providing good FORM!

Employees want to know that you’re listening to their feedback. Use engagement tools such as TINYpulse, Culture Amp and Officevibe to survey how workers are performing and generally feeling. Then respond to your employee feedback in a timely fashion.

​* Australian Human Resource Institute 

Candidate reactions are varied and many companies have tried to retain the people by offering counter offers.

Our experience and research indicates that often counter offers from employers are vague attempts to keep the commitment and loyalty of staff. In fact, our surveys say that over 72% of staff who are counter offered by their employer leave within the next twelve months as the original reasons for leaving still exist. For example their salary may have increased but the culture, conditions and politics remain the same.

When staff announce their departure, often employers take it personally and make promises that the environment will improve and try to offer more money or greater salary benefits.

At Mondo Search we have observed a number of situations that occur after a counter offer has been made:

• Staff generally will still leave within twelve months, after being counter offered, as staff generally choose to leave for other reasons, apart from salary and conditions.
• Candidates currently at our interviews are generally not concerned about salary package, rather the type of company, the culture and the career opportunities.
• Candidates will move sideways in title or position, if the culture, industry and or reputation of the company are held in high regard.
• Candidates are now also more interested in the lifestyle factors around the role, including distance to work, the company’s attitude to working from home, paternity and maternity leave and opportunity for company shares and equity.
• A lack of trust is embedded at the time of the counter offer, as people wonder why they have been offered better salary/conditions or job opportunity only after they have threatened to leave. Why was this only addressed after the moment that they decided to leave? Is the company lacking strategic initiative and are they purely short term thinkers and reactionary?

So as an employer, when considering offering a counter offer to a staff member, to try and keep them, consider that you are likely to be facing the same situation, within twelve months. Look at your current team, keep close to the ones that you want to keep on your team and they will be less tempted to make a career change. The grass is not always greener on the other side!

Once someone decides to leave they eventually will leave. So when considering a counter offer just remember that it may be very counter productive.

Reach out if you ever need help finding or keeping talent. Our mission is finding good people for good.

Contact us at simone@mondosearch.com.au

Mondo Search has been selected as the Australian representative for International Management Search Consultants.

Click here to view the IMSA Search Trends Global Report 2023: IMSA-Global-Report-2023