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Maybe they do, maybe they don't. But I'll tell you one thing unhappy people do: they leave, taking all your institutional knowledge with them. And now you're o

Maybe they do, maybe they don't. But I'll tell you one thing unhappy people do: they leave, taking all your institutional knowledge with them. And now you're on the hook for some serious employee acquisition costs, not to mention the downed productivity and training. I recently left my job for another one, and it looks like my former colleagues are leaving one by one also. This is one of the major household-name software companies, one with a particularly infamous attrition rate. Every single person who's leaving started down that path because they were unhappy, not because someone made them an offer they couldn't refuse. In this market, if your employees are not happy they will get poached.

rubinelli 15y ago
If employees are leaving, at least it becomes obvious there is a problem. It is when people don't leave that the company is in serious danger. When unhappy employees do just enough not to get fired, they end up impeding their co-workers, who burn out and also become unhappy. I've seen departments where people spent more time explaining why they couldn't work than working.
- anthonyb 15y ago
  The attrition rate isn't the worst part. The worst part is what's known as the "Dead Sea effect" - all of the people who can leave, do. They're usually the better ones, at which point you're left with all the clueless or unskilled people who couldn't find better jobs.
amcintyre 15y ago
In this market, if your employees are not happy they will get poached. ...and they'll poach themselves even if you offer them a little salary bump, or a $50 gift certificate for that time they came in and worked through the weekend taking 2-hour naps in their office. I've known several people over the years that took fairly large pay cuts just to get to an environment where they were allowed to do a good job, unobstructed, at something they enjoyed and did well. I think this is all lost on many companies, though. It seems to happen most often when the organization has large groups of people that are completely removed from the customer and any negative impact of bad decisions on the production.

rubinelli 15y ago

If employees are leaving, at least it becomes obvious there is a problem. It is when people don't leave that the company is in serious danger. When unhappy employees do just enough not to get fired, they end up impeding their co-workers, who burn out and also become unhappy. I've seen departments where people spent more time explaining why they couldn't work than working.

anthonyb 15y ago
The attrition rate isn't the worst part. The worst part is what's known as the "Dead Sea effect" - all of the people who can leave, do. They're usually the better ones, at which point you're left with all the clueless or unskilled people who couldn't find better jobs.

amcintyre 15y ago

In this market, if your employees are not happy they will get poached. ...and they'll poach themselves even if you offer them a little salary bump, or a $50 gift certificate for that time they came in and worked through the weekend taking 2-hour naps in their office. I've known several people over the years that took fairly large pay cuts just to get to an environment where they were allowed to do a good job, unobstructed, at something they enjoyed and did well. I think this is all lost on many companies, though. It seems to happen most often when the organization has large groups of people that are completely removed from the customer and any negative impact of bad decisions on the production.