With US employee job satisfaction at its lowest level in 22 years I have to wonder what it’s going to take for companies to wake up and take a hard look at themselves and how they’re running their talent operations. In 1987 job satisfaction was at 61%. At the end of 2009 it was at 45%. In the report I’ve linked to 22% of their respondents said they didn’t expect to be in their current job a year from the time the survey was taken.
Job satisfaction lowest in decadesAs I’ve said in the past, executives say they are committed to alignment and processes that insure they are able to recruit, hire and retain top talent, but most seem unwilling to put their money where their mouth is. It reminds me of the scene from Moonstruck when Cher’s character slaps Nick Cage’s character across the face and tells him, “Snap out of it!”. My experience indicates most of this coming from the CEOs, and even VCs, with their head in the sand. I’ve experienced companies that have said they know their churn is costing them a fortune, actually working out the numbers, and still having them decide to keep the status quo. Sometimes they are making money in spite of the churn, so they decide to do nothing. One of my sales reps spoke to a CEO he’d known for years. The business had dropped from 20M to 8M in just a few years. Bad hires had cost him a fortune and his turnover was out of control. He said the process became unglued at about the 10M mark. The guy understood how much money he was losing but had no interest in putting a process in place that would result in increased revenues. All these companies seem to have a short term view. Maybe they don’t think their bleeding is critical…. Remember the tortoise and the hare? We all know how that turned out. Slow, meticulous planning and execution wins.
I have given these types of attitudes a great deal of thought and I think I’ve finally realized what’s going on here. We live in a country that operates by responding in a reactive manner rather than a proactive manner. Of course 2 of the most recent examples are that of the bank and auto bailouts. Had there been better processes in place within the mortgage industry we taxpayers wouldn’t be footing the bill and mortgaging the futures of our children to keep these companies in business. If the automotive giants had planned better we taxpayers wouldn’t have had to bail them out either. Just 2 examples of reactive behavior. Am I the only one wondering, if companies would just focus on being proactive to deal with issues, how much revenue they’d be generating?
