Over the past several years, businesses have conducted surveys of their employees trying to determine what it will take to keep them happy on the job. For those that believed that paying higher wages would be the key to reducing employee turnover, the results of the surveys have been surprising. Not only was pay scales not top on the list, in most cases it barely made the top five reasons stated for employees to stay with a certain company.
Most employees expressed frustration in the ability to perform their job up to the expectations of the company and its customers. It is not that they feel inadequate in performing their essential job functions it is more that they feel as though they were not sufficiently trained to perform their job. Entry-level positions, according to the surveys, provide the main source of frustration for new employees as they are often thrown to the wolves to fend for themselves.
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http://doi.wiley.com/10.1002/(SICI)1520-6386(199807/09)9:3%3C9::AID-CIR4%3E3.0.CO;2-IHOME |
Training new employees has become an issue with many smaller employers, however even some of the largest companies are not immune to criticism for not equipping new people with the knowledge they need to perform their job properly. Check out clerks are one of the most frustrated in the job market, according to surveys, who claim they are shown once, maybe twice which buttons to push on the cash registers and then left to their own devices to take care of the customers. If they make a mistake, they are often reprimanded.
Worse yet, if they have a problem with an item ringing up the wrong price, they may not be told how to fix the problem, or may not have the individual authority to make even minor decisions and the employee waits for a manager to appear to make things right. While most customers may be patient, others will take their frustration of having to wait out on the employee who may have only been on the job for less than a week. The frustration the employee feels about not being able to solve the problem while being yelled at by the customer is multiplied when the manager shows up and gets a pat on the back by the irate customer for helping them out.
Some companies take extreme measures to insure the employees have all the training materials they need to perform their job. Unfortunately, many do not follow up to make sure the materials are understood, if read at all. When people enter a supervisory position it is normal to expect them to take responsibility for their own training, but with a front-line employee, usually making minimum wage, the attitude that they are not getting paid enough to do a particular job, is not really a knock on the pay scale. It is more that they feel that as a new employee, someone needs to tell them what they need to learn.
In conclusion, your company could see a quantum leap in employee retention by simply having an effective training and follow up regimen for all employees.
Good Luck And Stay The Course!
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Keeping Employees May Be As Easy As Training Them