Page 19 - Retaining Top Employees

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“Employee What?!” 7

Tweaking Around the Edges
The first steps in employee retention were simply to perform an
iteration on the old employer-employee relationship—nothing
too dramatic, just some attempts to make the existing relation-
ship better, more palatable for the employee. Employers
(understandably) wanted to begin with those things that met the
following three criteria:
• Familiar ground in the old employer-employee relationship
• Easy to track in terms of employee turnover cause and
effect
• Readily quantifiable
First attempts at employee retention, therefore, dealt prima-
rily with hygiene factors—compensation, benefits, and the phys-
ical aspects of the working environment (for example, employ-
ee health and safety, toilet breaks, shift planning and duration,
etc.), all of which fulfilled the three criteria above.
Many organizations began to pull their compensation
packages more into line with something called the
“market level.” (With the
increasingly free flow of Hygiene factors Items
information, it was that do not in themselves
becoming more and more motivate employees,but that
are necessary to prevent dissatisfac-
difficult for employers to
tion.The term comes from Frederick
pay an employee dramati-
Herzberg,one of the most influential
cally less than a competi-
management teachers and consultants
tor, so this wasn’t much of of the postwar era. Herzberg studied
a concession.) It became employees in the 1950s and 1960s
more common for organi- and found that certain factors tended
zations to include non- to cause employees to feel unsatisfied
monetary “hygiene fac- with their job.That research led him
tors” such as workplace to develop his “hygiene theory.”
Among the hygiene factors (also
health, safety, and comfort
known as satisfiers) Herzberg identi-
in the basic deal they
fied were physical work environment,
offered to employees. company policies,and salary.