July 10, 2008 — According to a new study, 47% of high performers are actively looking for other jobs. But even worse, low performers want to stay with only 18% looking for new jobs. In addition, a solid 25% of middle performers are looking.
Leadership IQ surveyed 16,237 employees on a range of workforce and retention issues, and then divided them into high, middle and low performer categories based on their annual performance appraisal scores.There were 3,896 employees identified as high performers, 8,607 identified as middle performers, and 3,734 low performers.
“The worst part of this is that we typically cause our high performers to quit by how we treat them, said Mark Murphy, CEO of Leadership IQ. “Frankly, we treat our high performers worse than any other employee. When a manager has a tough project upon which the whole company depends, to whom do they turn? Who gets the late hours and the stress? It’s not the low performers, because managers want the project done right.Instead managers turn to their handful of high performers. Over and over we ask our high performers to go above and beyond, making their jobs tough and burning them out at a terrible pace. Meanwhile, low performers often get easier jobs because their bosses dread dealing with them and may avoid them altogether."
Retaining top performing employees should be a priority for not only human resource managers but also the organization as a whole. More than likely, employees who leave your company are taking their knowledge and talent to your competitor, creating a real threat to your business. Protect your greatest assets and motivate employees with employee recognition and incentive programs. To read a related article on this topic, please check out this link: http://www.awardsnetwork.com/blog/2008/09/protect-your-greatest-assetret.html.
Rodney B Hulsey, CCP, PHR Compensation & HR Consultant - Internal Member Since: 2/10/1997 Comments: 12
We all know the pitfalls of performance appraisals and one of the top pitfalls is that managers rate employees they "like" higher than ones they merely get along with. Many good performers are not rated as average because they're not in the 15%-20% of employees that the manager likes. I wonder how many of the employees are looking to leave who claim that they are one of their boss's "favorite" employees? I'd be more interested in the results of that survey.
Matthew Lyon Compensation Manager Member Since: 2/1/2007 Comments: 2
"Bosses...may avoid them altogether?" Now there's one good reason for employees suffering from low performance through no fault of their own. Employees may be labeled as low-performing given that their supervisors do not give them enough worthwhile projects or do not allow them to take the initiative on new projects. If this is the case, then the supervisor should be labeled as low-performing, even though they may 1) take on and get credit for any projects that their employees should take part in, or 2) assign another employee the same project just because s/he is a high performer, even though the project does not pertain to the high performer's area of expertise.
Kimberly Evans, CCP Manager, Compensation Member Since: 5/20/1997 Comments: 1
I'd like to know how companies are dealing with the issue of low performance. Are there specific steps companies are taking to aggressively address this prevalent problem?
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