Slashdot Mirror
What's The Best Way To Retain Trained Employees?
Johnny Mnemonic asks: "I work for a small company that is considering spending a large chunk of resources on developing/training the team. This training will have the side effect of making us worth two to three times as much as we are paid now--and the honchos are afraid, reasonably, that after they spend the money on dev we will all jump ship. The fact that if we don't receive this training our company will be dead in two years escapes their notice. What do other places do to retain their help after a development/training cycle? Do they require the employees to learn it on their own hook, pay for it and then have the employees sign contracts for a period of time, or bite the bullet and pay for the training and either sweeten the share or expect some loss?"
"For those wanting more detail, we are currently a Mac Reseller and Support shop; admittedly fringe, but in our market there's plenty of work, and we continue to grow. However, we need to prepare for OS X--and although the consumer may never have to get to the CLI, we sure will. Receiving training on the CLI in OS X will make us de facto Unix sysadmins--and there's a lot more want ads for Unix sysadmins than Apple Product Professionals."
Get real, learning an OS-X CLI and how to administrate OSX won't give you any noticable increase in market value in the real world. You still won't know how to administrate a "real" Unix, won't have any "real" training, won't have any "real" experience. It takes a LOT more than a couple weeks training to be a qualified Unix system adminstrator, especially when that training is on a heavily modified variant of a Unix that isn't widely used in real enterprise environments anyway. There would be almost no skills transfer from OS-X to other Unixes.
Thats the way to get them to pay for the training -- educate them on the real lack of value that such training represents and point out to them that any of their employees that think that the addition of that skill set would significantly increase their value in the marketplace are so out of touch with reality that their loss probably won't be very significant anyway.
I don't want to be rude, but its not like they're paying for you to get Sun Certified or something.
I have been given the opportunity several times to go to training, but the company puts my neck in a noose with a contract. No thank you, I would rather buy the O'Reilly book.
This is what really bothers me... most of this training stuff can be figured out if the person just spends a little time reading and thinking through matters. Being sent to a training session has all the appearance of learning something (just like college courses), but it doesn't compare with spending some time learning it yourself. This route does have some limitations, especially if you are learning a proprietary technology. In my company we solve that problem by adopting no proprietary technologies. Basically, if O'Reilly doesn't write a book about it (or they conceivably couldn't do so) then we don't adopt the technology. It is really that simple.
-- Solaris Central - http://w
I hope anyway. Otherwise I'm going to put the fact that I installed Linux on my box at home down as sysadmin experience too. Cause I don't log in as root, I created another user for myslf. And I shut off ftpd to avoid security holes. That makes me a sysadmin too, right? In a resume sort of way?
sorry, got a little out of hand...
Bleh!
Buying a hammer does not qualify you to build houses.
Buying a camo hat and shiny boots does not make you a soldier of fortune.
Buying a Mazda Miata does not make you an F1 champion.
Buying a golf ball does not make you Tiger Woods.
--
Infuriate left and right
This is one of the big things that keeps me in contracting. I have a lot more leverage with clients for time off. If there is a slow period between projects, what do they care, let me have two weeks off, they do not have to pay me. Also, between contracts I can take as much time off as I want.
What I would love to see is more jobs (W2 employee) offered as hourly positions. Then time off just becomes a project management issue. December is going to be very slow? The project manager lets you take it off, if you are willing to forego the income (maybe this income loss was offset by extra hours earlier in the year).
I have a few ideas on how to keep trained employees.
One: If they leave within a year, make them pay for the training.
It sounds mean, but it works. The company that I work for does the same thing. We consider it our invisible leash, but I think its fair. If they are going to spend thousands of dollars on me, they deserve something out of me. And I get to be trained on the latest and greatest things. Makes me happy, makes them happy. But don't make the leash last more than a year. Anything more than that might scare away candidates.
Two: Compensate them well.
In a technical company, us techs are the lifes blood of the company. Marketing, sales, legal, all very important people, but in this economy we have now, techs are very valued, and deserve to be paid for their skills. Its easy to get another salesman, they are a dime a dozen, but finding another perl guru might be a wee bit difficult. If you don't pay your tech's well, they will easily jump ship as soon as their invisible leash breaks, and take them and their skills YOU paid for to another company for more money. Plus more pay helps loyalty too. Stock options are nice too.
Three: Listen to your techs, and make them feel like real members of the company
I can't count how many times I've seen/heard techs give a honest and non flattering review of something only to be disregarded and ignored. Then when the project or the machine blows up, the techs get jumped on for not getting it to work correctly. And don't let saleman Bob define how things must work. An overview, perhaps, but not cramming specs down tech's throats. Give them some freedom and power to play (which is what makes them good techs) and you will be amazed. But don't let them go nuts either. Know when to put the breaks on things. Finaly, make them feel part of the team, not the stepchildren you have hidden in the server room.
That being said, people with H1-B visas are in a bit of a pickle. I've never dealt with it (I'm a citizen), but my understanding is that the consequences of leaving the job are being deported. This could be turned into indentured servitude, if I understand the law correctly.
Any H1-B employees have a perspective on this?
--The basis of all love is respect
Not to say money isn't a factor. While money can't buy you happiness, financial insecurity causes an aweful lot of greif and depression. If a company is unwilling or unable to pay for your skills, then it's their loss.
But their are other factors that affect whether or not people will stay once they are there.
That covers most of the bases. Money might bring people to a job, but people don't start looking for another job unless they are unhappy. Keeping with what I said before, too little money can cause unhappiness, so don't forget that too. (btw: I know, I know, I have been trolled, and I will try to have a nice day.)
More Caffeine. NOW
The answer, of course, is pay-for-performance rather than pay-for-time.
Under pay-for-performance, people have an incentive to optimize their performance so they'll have more spare time to do things that the company shouldn't have to pay for. Things like spend more time with the kids, work on some cool hack they've been dreaming up, just defocus a bit to take in a larger view of life or *gasp* becoming more educated so they can further optimize their performance!
Call me old fashioned...
Seastead this.
How about ripping the last 50 or so pages out of all the manuals and not giving them back until contracts have been signed? :-)
The conclusion of your syllogism, I said lightly, is fallacious, being based on licensed premises
1.)Foosball tables, poool tables, video games, etc..
2.)Send everyone on a cruise! (My employer is oing this right now. Its a cheapo 4-day deal in Miami, but what a great morale booster.
3.)Buy lunch once a week.
4.)Offer 3 or 4 weeks of vacation. A little bit more than average.
5.)Open a satelite office in the 'burbs, or do work at home two days a weel.
6.)Free soda,coffee, bottled water.
7.)Stock options.
8.)Better than average healthcare.
9.)Ask your employees what they want most.
Okay, I'm out of ideas. Here's the scoop. I know right now that I could increase my income as a direct bill contractor by 50-60%. Why don't I?
Two reasons. First I have a family and two small children, and I want to spend time with them and not work myself nutty chasing down leads, so I guess thats less time. Two, I have great health care which helps with the kids. So I'm giving myself a break for a few years. (I have been an IC for the last 7 years.) It absolutely kills me to here management talk about high costs of free soda and vacation. The cost of replacing one employee is at least 25% of the annual salary of the position. Happy people don't leave. You can be cheaper onthe salary if you don't scrimp on the benefits.
One last thing to all you HR people. As an IC I would take 4-6 weeks off a year. I routinely make up for all those lost weeks and more in overtime. Every time I look for a job I mention desiring 4 weeks of vacation. I get looks like I am from mars. Its not a negotiable benefit, and no one seems to think its a reasonable request. If I ever found a company that offered 4 weeks of vacation to start I would be willing to make substantial allowances for that. I can't be the only one. Try offering more vacation!
www.avacal.com -- the home page of pete shaw
- "Just in Time" inventory systems, for example, where you save money by not having a large warehouse, but get screwed over if there is a temporary shortage. The upside on shortages if that if you plan it right, you can charge more for product in high demand.
- The removing of many layers of middle management. The upside is the removing of many layers of deadwood. The downside is the loss of a place to send workers who can't be fired, but who are harmful to the company in a decision making position.
- There is also a trend to lack of company loyalty because of diminished investment by workers and management in the future of the company. The result is that now that there are fewer senior being grown internally. This not only applies to middle managers, but also to Technology Experts. Factually, people have to be imported form overseas. This does not ensure competancy, and may produce other problems because of cultural clashes, sometimes on a subtle level.
- Lack of Scalability due to lack of sufficient people at hand to have sufficient organization to grow.
The overall effect is to encourage a cannibalization of resources because it is cheaper in the short term to strip mine what you have, or to pillage your competition for resources. This is horribly short sighted, often encouraged by investment houses and others who scream for higher stock prices so they can make their profits, and the human cost be damned.It is far more difficult to breath life into an enterprise and to grow it into a stable expanding concern.
Despite all of the management schools in existance, and all of the courses and degrees offered, it is obvious the most of the content beyond the basic machanic of accounting is full of junk ideas.
The management systems of companies are buggy beyond belief. There are resource leaks all over the place. There is no effective garbage collection. There are system conflicts all over the place. Anyone who put together a system like this would not even have the competancy of a script kiddie.
The fundamental expertise required to establish a modern running business has to be at least the level of any experienced system guru out there. And it isn't.
Management science needs to become an actual science based in the real world, with real principles. Right now, management is based far more on individual talent and genius than any real standardized body of knowledge.
Heck, when was the last time you saw the idea of applying the techniques of quality assurance to management? and how would you do it?
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
There is one good answer when an employer asks, "What if I train my employees and they leave?" and that is "What if you don't train them and they stay?"
Wages are the bottom line for any employer-employee relationship. Anyone who says otherwise is deluding himself.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
There is no
The reason that I have left my last few jobs was not money, but the work environment. Cubical Hell is a good way to loose employees. Give everone an office, even a small one, just so that every once in a while you can close your door and be alone to work on something is an increadble incentive to stay at a company. Free soda, coffee, hot chocolate and snacks are also major pluses. Another personal plus is the ablity to listen to music...esp the music I like. So either a good sound system (the altec-lansings are good! So are the harman-karden stuff), or good headphones...the Koss KSP/Portapro series give excellent frequency response from 50Hz to 20,000Hz, serious bass, and cost about $50. They are open air style, so that they don't block outside sounds.
Flex time, where possible is good, and/or the ablity to "bank" time, then take it off later is good. Extra vacation time is another plus...a week paid vacation is worth $5,000/year less to me.
A lack of dress code is also a major plus...if they really wanted a GQ model, they could have hired one, along with their wardrobe...if they hire me, I am a Unix/Linux SysAdmin/Security person, not a GQ model. Having to wear a tie all the time will cost a company an extra $10,000/year to hire me. A suit does not make a person work better.
Give people input into the company!!!! When people feel engaged in the company, rather than just some cog grinding out product, they tend to become more interested in the company, and thus less likely to be headhunted.
Prevent "little empires" within a company, this is bad for the company anyways, and it builds cliques, and when a person feels excluded, ie., not part of the clique, they are more open to leaving.
..just a few ideas...
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
As a Canadian Hi-Techy, many people ask me why I don't pack up and head to the States to make twice as much as I do now.
Money is nice, but it's not all. Right now I work in an environment where my boss respects me, I have no boss over my shoulder all the time, no strict timesheet to complete, no idiot co-workers to bog me down, and the freedom to arrive a bit late and take an occasional afternoon off. Besides, I don't have to wear a shirt and tie!
I make a pretty decent salary, and it's plenty to afford house, cars, snowmobiles, cottage, 2.3 kids, dog and cat. What more could I want? Greed breeds misery, if you ask me.
It's not always greener on the other side!
Somehow I think it takes more than that to be a Unix sysadmin. :-)
I worked for a small ISP a while back. The owner proposed that I get an MCSE, and that he would pay for the tests on the condition that if I left within a year of taking a test, I reimburse him for the test. I think that offer would have been workable except for one thing: since I started working there, he had hired five new employees, all of whom has less experience than I, and all of whom has fewer job resposibilities than I. Every single one of the new hires was paid between $1 and $7/hour more than he paid me, even after a "generous" (to him) raise.
The fact that I was quite obviously being given the short end of the wage deal was enough to make me consider the one-year-or-reimburse deal to be not nearly sweet enough. When I left after a year and a quarter (the second longest tenure of any of his employees, according to the bookkeeper), I was still getting paid the same very low wage.
So, basically, I suppose what I'm saying is that it is impossible to retain employees if you give them the distinct impression that you will not be fair to them. If you give them a fair deal, something like an "if you leave within a year, we get back some|all of the money we spent on your training" will look a whole lot more attractive, and pay the person running your entire ISP division a bit more than the new techie grunt.
Well the original poster says he works for a reseller and support shop dealing with Macs. If the guys working there are going to be sysadmins after a one week class, well they are going to become sysadmins in a few more months on their own inititive anyways.
I've been to some unix training classes before, one of them Sun's sysadmin training (part 1). And I can tell you that it will take a lot more than a 1 week class to make someone a sysadmin. Even if that classes is geared towards making sysadmins.
Unless Apple has some really great training - "I know kung-fu! AND Unix!".
Unless the original poser is implying that a 1 week training class automagically makes someone worth double what they were making. Regardless of what they learned in that class.
Prospective employeers give preferance to employees skilled in a version of Unix they are using. If the interview was for a job in an OSX shop, well I'd expect the guy with OSX training and experiance to get a higher offer than someone with training and experiance with Solaris, all things being equal. How many places out there are looking to hire Solaris admins? HPUX? Lots. It remains to be seem what the demand for OSX specific admins will be.
What's the difference between admining OSX and some other Unix? Maybe 10 - 20K a year.
That being said, if I would interviewing for admins I would prefer someone who had been messing around with Linux for a couple of years and really nailed the general unix questions to someone who had been to 2 or 3 classes in exactly the OS they would be working in on the job, but couldn't answer any general technical questions.
Lots of people out there that look good on paper but sound REALLY bad when you get them in the room with a couple of admins with 10 years experiance doing the technical questioning...
People like to be challenged and appreciated. If it's really true that your people will be 3 times as valuable after the training, show it. Can you afford to pay them what you think they'd be worth in the market? That would be a good start. If you can't, look at retention bonuses. Everybody will say that it's not about the money, but honestly that depends on the scale. If you're paying $50k and somebody else offers $55k, then yeah, it's not about the money. But if you really mean that they could make $150k elsewhere, then you'll likely find that people take a serious look at those other offers.
But if the money is in the ballpark, then it's vital to keep the workplace interesting. The best consulting houses I know all run a common knowledge base that individuals feel they can feed off of, which is a nice feature. The best hackers know that they don't know everything, but they like the idea of having access to such a distributed knowledge base. Have regular events, too. Not just drinking at the local pub, either. Have offsites where you plan future projects. Give management responsibility to some of your more senior people. Make them feel that there's more to the job than just the Unix training they received.
I don't think that trying to lock people in will work. For starters, instead of sending the message that "The company wants you to improve as a person", you get "The company wants to use you to improve itself". And whether or not that's true in both cases, the thing is that people don't want to have it thrown in their face. Management is well aware that when Java people say they want to work on Enterprise Java Beans, it's to improve their own marketability -- it's not a far stretch to assume that people know that if a company sends you for training, they expect it to be profitable for them as a company. But trying to enforce that will just cause people to resent you, in which case you'll either lose them before the training, or else they'll take the training, grudgingly suffer the minimum contract period, and then definitely leave.
Remember, people do leave. There's nothing you can do about it, once someone has made up her mind. That's what exit interviews are for. If somebody leaves and tells you on the way out "Damnit I've been asking you for 9 months for a refrigerator for the developers", then you get an idea of how important those perks are.
In short, if you're talking about treating some people like the stars of the show, make sure that they feel like it. Let them walk around in their socks, even if there's a company dress code. Give them their own refrigerator if they don't already have one. In the long run these are tiny benefits that won't cost the company much at all. You have an advantage, your people are already there. Contrary to popular belief, the best people don't like to job hop. It's a pain in the neck to change insurance, move 401k money, etc... So you don't really have to compete with every job out there -- you just have to make sure that you work with what you've got and keep it nice for your talent.
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
Why have you ever left previous jobs?
Then ask this of the people at your company.
Here are the reasons I think that people change jobs:
(1) Lack of respect. The scenario I've seen over and over again over the years is the ego tripping manager whose internal narrative is "I get things done despite the miserable cretins who work for me." The people you want to retain do not put up with nonsense like that.
(2) Lack of progress. No matter how brilliant the work you do is, if it goes into a productivity black hole, or if the company doesn't know how to make use of it, you're morale suffers. When your boss expects the impossible of you he's failed to put together a winning plan and is setting you up for the fall.
(3) Lack of financial stability. Not knowing if you're going to be in business next week is much worse on morale than not having the highest salaries in the industry. Repeat after me: overhead is evil. Overhiring is evil and unproductive.
(4) Lack of opportunity to do interesting stuff. The best people will want an opportunity to stretch their capabilities, both by working on novel projects and by professional development.
All these things are the ingredients of a winning team -- respect, clear and achievable goals, fiscal responsibilty, and creativity. I don't have problems with various gimmicks to raise employee motivation, but the best motivation of all is being part of a winning team.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
A lot of people have cited contracts, but has anyone ever heard of repurcussions from breaking them? Compucom hires bright college kids, send them to Dallas for MCSE, and a bunch of other certs from a pool (Compaq,HP, Intel). They are supposed to stay for two years, but I knew two that jumped ship about 1 to 1.5 yrs in, without repurcussions. How legally binding are they? This was in MA, so state right to work laws might play a role.
IANAL, and have never worked for CompuCom.
matt
I'm one of those deluded individuals that believes there's more to life than money. I also manage a team of 5 people and have been able to keep them as happy, well-adjusted employees.
First, having an open, honest relationship with your people is important. One of my guys came to me a couple of months ago, and told me that he was thinking of floating out a couple of resumees; I asked him if there was a problem with what he was doing, and he indicated that he wasn't learning as much as he wanted to. So, we discussed the matter openly and honestly and he has since decided to stay -- after I assigned him a good amount of his weekly time to do "technology discovery" -- basically, playtime where he is able to see if there are other appropriate technologies that we should be using (my department does web design and development). I offer my people flexible work times, even though that is not company policy. I keep them "in the loop" as far as company-wide and department-wide issues go. I make sure they are well-equipped, with fast machines and 21" monitors. I give them access to mentors outside of our department so that they can learn from more experienced people. I have convinced accounting to allow me to pay for technology-related and programming classes outside of the normal tuition-reimbursement channels, so that they can also take college classes. I buy them lunch once a month or so, and we have a couple of beers and bitch about stuff that we want to fix, and come up with plans on how to fix them.
Bottom line to me is, I have a group of people who are not the highest paid in the company (though I am working on that, too), yet I have one of the highest retention rates in a 900 person company. Remember, sometimes the less-tangible things can be as important as money.
Pete
I find it extremely hard to define a whole set of things that want to make people stay. Most people are different and want different things from work; younger folks want money; older folks want time. But when companies institute policies that aggrevate employees they almost guarantee those people will leave.
Not all people are happy at work, it does not mean they wish to leave, nor does happiness guarantee that someone will be a lifer. 20 year olds might like foosball machines, but a 50 year old might prefer a quiet room where they can smoke.
It takes allsorts to run a company, but we also run companies through the use of quite small teams. Keeping teams effective generally ends up retaining those team members.
I'm a network manager and I have some theories on the best way to keep IT people and the sad thing is that they are common sense issues that don't involve hiring IT slaves from India.
1. compensate people within the regional average for the skills they bring. (this rule MUST be followed first before others can work)
2. Make sure that the employee will do what that person was hired to do! (there is nothing worse than being hired as a network professional only to be stuck doing support work)
3. Spread interesting projects around, even if an employee doesn't have all the skills needed for a project, then team that person with someone who does. Make work a learning environment, that beats classroom training anyday!
4. Give honest praise when and where it is due. There is nothing worse than doing work that doesn't make a difference or doesn't receive recognition.
5. Listen to the people doing the work. They know about what they are doing and this gives them a chance to be a part of the business and learn more about business paired with IT.
6. Talk to your employees and be honest when ever you can. If there is something that you are not allowed to tell the employees, tell them that you can't say instead of lying.
7. Train when you have to, and compensate for new skills when they are being used.
8. Make room for employees to move within the organization. I would rather hire from within than hire outside the company, this benefits the company by retaining company knowledge and improves staff retention.
9. Make flex time available to people who want it. As long as the job gets done, what does it matter when the employees work? If they do a night shif for downtime projects, give them comp time instead of overtime if they want.
10. Small perks, take the staff out to lunch or drinks after work, expecially after rough projects or exceptional work done.
There are some other variations, of course, and many other twists that will work in substitution for the soft benefits. But the issue boils down to respect since these people are professionals.
IT people went to college, have to continuously study and relearn, they work long hours, and they work hard to be the best at what they do. Recognize their effort and make steps to appriciate this and show your respect when it is due.
But, that is just my opinionated opinion as a network manager with limited control over what I can do for my employees. (who have never left when I have managed or supervised wherever I have been).
"When people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called 'the People's Stick'." -Bakunin