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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."
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...
What Workers Want
What Supervisors Think Workers Want
Hmmmm...I guess I actually learned something from that management training I just got out of. I've truncated this list a bit, but you get the point. The top 5 are still there.
The point is Mof-Tan is kinda correct about thing. Money is only an issue if ya feel disgruntled. Workers are more interested in things other than just good cold $$$.
I run a small development department for Indiana University. I pay my people between $10 and $15 an hour and thats with me having to canibalize grant monies for other projects to keep them around. My programmers are VERY loyal and I usually have to fire them to get them out the door once I know they could do so much better else where. Hell, half the time they come back and work unpaid on projects they feel connected to (heh...3 of my ex-employees still have keys).
Managers need to instill pride, trust and loyalty in their people and there are a lot of ways to do it. Unfortunately it isn't something that can be listed on paper as its different for each person.
If a person is complaining about money, it is your job as an employeer to make sure they are happy in their job. If not, you need to make some changes. If they are, you need to help them find gainful employeement elsewhere where they can get what they need. Employees leaving is a fact of life. Are you going to keep people past their productivity because they have gone into depression and done a work slowdown/stop or are ya going to foster good relations and show that you are a good employeer by helping them with their resume and introduce them to others than can pay them what they are worth.
blah
clif
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