Replacing employees

[stephen]

Generally in order to receive a substantial raise an employee must quit and go elsewhere for employment. Then the company has to train and pay someone more than they were paying the original employee to come in and do their same caseload. Why do companies do this?

[Guest Mike Kimball]

some reasons:

1. if the employee no longer fits in the organization, it easier than firing the employee, risking wrongful termination suits, etc.

2. if the employee has not shown initiative to grow and learn more or earn professional designations, etc. this business is a knowledge business and the people with more knowledge are worth more.

3. perhaps the fee structure of the firm does not support increases in pay. maybe fees should be increased unless the market competition doesn't support it.

4. some employees think they are entitled to a "raise" just because they survived another year regardless of performance. they should get out of the private sector!

5. perhaps the firm is not organized efficiently enough and is wasting a lot of it's resources which could provide the capital necessary to pay employees more.

these are just some immediate thoughts I have on the subject.

[Guest Ron Wohl]

Employees leave their company or lose interest and have low morale for many reasons, but the most prevalent of reasons, according to most studies, is that they feel the company doesn't care about them anymore--if they ever did.

Companies throughout the country are experiencing low miorale and high turnover because they are interested only in short term profits that can be achieved by outsourcing, increasing workloads and eliminating training oportunities. These companies look at employees as a necessary, but costly evil. They don't care about the values of the workforce. They think if you throw money (salary and money-based benefits) at employees, that is sufficient to get them to work harder.

Some enlightend companies are finding that if they examine the personal values their employees hold dearly and harmonize the companies corporate values with their employees' values, morale increases sinificantly and turnover reduces. Sometimes this simply means giving deserving employees a pat on the back, letting employees become involved in business strategizing, or introducing family oriented benefits or work schedules. This is called re-humanizing and may very well become the newest successful management practice because of its appeal to common sense!

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