Employee retention ultimately comes down to one thing: appreciation.
According to a massive new Achievers survey 64% of workers plan on saying goodbye to their current job in 2020. One in five of the 1,154 employees polled laments a lack of stimulating daily tasks and an additional 82% wished they received more recognition from their supervisors at work.
Achievers’ Chief Workforce Scientist, Dr. Natalie Baumgartner explained, “Our data shows a substantial portion of today’s workforce already has one foot out the door. This is a huge shift from what we found last year: that despite disengagement, 65% of employees were planning on staying at their jobs. Employers must take immediate action to reverse these feelings of underappreciation and disengagement. If they don’t, the risk of turnover and underperformance in 2020 is immense.”
Recognition, compensation and perceived growth
Forty-seven percent of the survey pool were males and 53% were females. Thirteen percent were represented by Generation Z, 46% were Millennials, 21% were from Generation X and 20% were Baby Boomers. The median company size was less than 50 employees, representing 29% of the respondents, followed by companies staffed with 50–249 employees, which represented 21% of the study pool.
Even most of the employees who didn’t express any immediate plans to step down from their current roles didn’t think very highly of the leadership abilities of their employers. A third of workers said that their boss regularly did the bare minimum when it came to enriching employee experience and a modest 23% described their executive staff as “very committed” to work culture.
For the employees actively seeking another place of employment, “lack of recognition” was the most common reason followed by compensation and a lack of career growth.
Eighty-two percent of employees “strongly” or “somewhat” agreed that they don’t get enough recognition at work, and an additional 30% of employees either felt “not very” or “not at all”
valued by their superiors.
When it came to how sufficiently their employer and or corporation made employees feel appreciated, the top response from the participants was just “okay” (40%) and just about one in every five employees reported that their company or manager was “horrible” at recognizing their contributions.
Ninety percent of the workers featured in the new report said that they are more likely to stay at a company that is receptive to feedback. Unfortunately, when asked how good their company was at soliciting feedback, 15% said “horrible” and 43% said just “okay.”
Forty-four percent of respondents reported that their company is “horrible” at acting on feedback and they intend on looking for a new job within the new year as a consequence, compared to the 28% of those who described their company as “awesome.”
As far as the horizon is concerned, office culture, the values of an organization and the quality of senior leadership are the top three factors illustrating the most appealing job offers to applicants.