February 20, 2006	Monday	Muharram 21, 1427

HIGH employee turnover is supposed to be a cause for concern wherever it may occur. The segments experiencing high human resource (HR) turnover could range from consumer banking to domestic help.

A keen observer would analyze and conclude why household employee turnover may be high. In various neighbourhoods, the wage rate is pretty much the same. Yet, turnover is high. The reasons being the treatment meted out to domestic helpers and the degree of autonomy they enjoy in the work they do.

All domestic helpers seek decent treatment because they have self-respect and have a sense of self-esteem. They take pride in the work they do even if it is ordinary cleaning and washing. And, their sense of self-esteem derives from the evaluation of their work as satisfactory or good. Their self-esteem is inversely related to the frequency of objections. The more their work is objected upon, the more the self-esteem is hurt and the greater the turnover.

Also, the more closely they are supervised, the greater is their dissatisfaction and resentment and the higher the turnover, assuming that they know the job. Nitpicking is what they hate like everybody else. Further, the greater the autonomy they are given in their household related work, the happier they are, and the greater would the duration of their stay be.

The quality of supervision determines, amongst other factors, the duration of their stay with a household, the going wage rate notwithstanding. Other factors could include their personal circumstances that the household employer may not be able to help.

However, assuming that their personal lives are under control and the wage is acceptable, domestic helpers seek self-esteem as described above. This is a major determinant of the period of time for which a domestic helper might stay on. Maslow’s/HR schools’ theories are applicable even within the realm of the household, at least, to the second-highest level in the needs hierarchy.

To observe the above, however, deep insight into human psychology in general and that of employees in particular is required without which the uninitiated might just dismiss it all as baseless. A basic view of human rights may also help one corroborate the above observations and conclusion. For, these are the fields that under gird management thought and its evolution.

Why the educated professionals now switch jobs frequently points to the fact that the soul is in search of gratification and, therefore, restless and mobile in the upward direction. To say that “money is motivating employees” at the entry level and that all other motivational tools like work environment, type of management, content, and load of work tend to have negligible effects is to assume that other factors are well in place.

If the entry level manager is of the opinion that he/she is not getting due worth in terms of compensation, it reflects adversely on the environment, work climate, and management type too. If a competing organization is offering compensation in proportion to the contribution of the employee, the competing organization has a climate that facilitates the attainment of satisfaction-contribution equilibrium due to which professionals will tend to gravitate towards it.

So, the professionals move primarily because they are dissatisfied with their compensation package and not because they are motivated by salary alone. Salary is a satisfier whose absence will lead to dissatisfaction but whose presence may not necessarily motivate. Turnover because of salary points to dissatisfaction and not to motivation to move. And, turnover due to dissatisfaction shows that even the basic lower order need is not being fulfilled for which the onus lies squarely on the organization and its management practices. The above behaviour tends to support all management theories developed thus far.

For, surplus extraction is something that graduates in general and business graduates in particular would tend to discern faster than other professional types by virtue of their education in management, economics, finance, and marketing. Once they sense surplus extraction, they have a feeling of exploitation, and the desire to fight it that they do by jumping ships as they also have swell marketing capability.

So, the direction of causation is not that the turnover is affecting human resource management (HRM). Rather, it is HRM that is behind the turnover. Employee turnover is a symptom whose sources and causes need to be explored intra- and inter-organizationally to stem the tide. Unless this lower order need is first catered to, the higher level concepts of ownership and commitment cannot even be contemplated.

In the absence of organization’s relationship with the employees, customer service relationship cannot even be thought about. It is flawed reasoning to say that the above advanced concepts are negated by the turnover trend when the organization is not even ready to galvanize the commitment of the employee who is working with a feeling of exploitation.

Feeling of exploitation is not a function of how affluent a background an employee comes from. If a professional, however affluent, gives service, he/she must get commensurate return in terms of compensation package following which he/she may be expected to rise the hierarchy of needs in an organizational environment that must enable his/her advance. Organizations that fail to provide the basic satisfiers to their entry level professionals could hardly be providing an enabling enough environment for their bright professionals to rise and flourish in.

So, if there is a situation in which the consumer banking divisions are flourishing along with a few top shot executives but the entry level professionals are beset with a sense of deprivation, it speaks volumes about basic management practices in general and HRM in particular. To stem the tide of turnover then, what is needed is intra-organizational introspection before any attempt at segment-wide cartelization, if you will, to freeze the entry level offer.

For, if entry level salaries are frozen through a segment-wide “understanding,” then what they will have will be captive entry level “relationship” managers who will hardly be able to build relationships with customers or other stakeholders unless their internal relationships are ironed out.

To make a “relationship” manager truly relationship oriented, he/she must have the best of relationships within in which direction a beginning is always made by a fair employment contract that should not take undue advantage of the bargaining position of the candidate. It is the comfort level on this score that provides the basis of employees’ further development and thereby organizational development.

If the organization thrives along with a few and minus the many who are aware and who know that organization’s/division’s position is also due to their valuable inputs in return of which they get “lower than their worth,” then the organization must brace itself for higher and higher and still higher turnover.

The issue is first intra-organizational that must capture the attention of HRM that should act more and whine less. HRM must act to reduce intra-organizational inequities that may be vertical as well as horizontal. Profitability of the division must be shared equitably before employees are expected to develop shared values essential for sustainable organizational success. Profits repatriated or siphoned out within or outside the country and shared with only a few tend to create dissonance.

Large gaps between the take-home salaries of the highest and entry levels are difficult to fathom by professionals who have been trained not just in functional level management but also in overall organizational management. Good business/management programmes develop the ability of their graduates to look at the organizations from the top, from the sides, from down below, and inside out.

Retaining such minds is, therefore, a bigger challenge which organizations can brave only through meritocracy, fairness, equity, transparency, and above all good communication practices (GCP). GCP means no speech-action gap that all employees are quick to see due to native intelligence further honed by virtue of the training and development programmes undertaken by professionals. Employee retention, therefore, calls for equitable sharing of the income of the organization that should also be perceived as such by the employees through information sharing and strong internal marketing of HR practices that sell well with the employees.