Employer Perceptions about Job Satisfaction Factors Do Not Match Employee Reality; Salary.com Survey Reveals Disconnects Between Employers' Perceptions of Employee Job Satisfaction Factors and Why Employees Stay or Leave a Job

Business Wire, Jan 30, 2006

NEEDHAM, Mass. -- Salary.com, the compensation solutions experts, today released results from the 2005/2006 Employee Satisfaction and Retention Survey. The survey revealed surprising disparities between what employees value and what human resource (HR) professionals perceive to be important to overall employee job satisfaction and willingness to stay in or leave a job.

It comes as no surprise to HR managers that many employees plan to intensify their job search in 2006, given improved job market conditions. What will surprise many HR managers is who is searching, the advanced stage of these searches and the reasons their employees want to leave. Many employers are at increased risk of losing their most valuable and productive employees and may be off target with their efforts to retain these employees based on what is truly important to an employee's overall job satisfaction.

"The results of the survey quantify significant disconnects between employers and employees and provide HR managers with valuable employee insights," said Bill Coleman, senior vice president of compensation at Salary.com. "Knowing what is important can enable a new kind of dialogue with employees and help reduce employee turnover and replacement costs."

It is less expensive to pay a valued employee more money than to replace and train someone new. Salary.com quantified the monetary threshold (i.e., the increase in base salary that would convince an employee to stay or leave). For example, HR professionals estimated turnover costs to be 30 percent of the annual salary of the person being replaced. However, over half of dissatisfied employees say they would stay another year for as little as 15 percent more in base salary.

To download a copy of the survey results, visit http://www.salary.com.

Who is At Risk to Leave?

Salary.com found that 65 percent of the respondents to the survey plan to look for a new job in the next three months. Other job searching facts from the survey include:

--Increased Likelihood to Leave - The number of employees who described themselves as "very likely" to leave their current job has increased more than 50 percent in the past year, compared to Salary.com's 2004 finding.

--Widespread Resume Updating - Roughly 80 percent of the employees who responded to the survey have updated their resume in the past three months, while HR managers think only 32 percent of their employees have done so.

--Productive Workers Looking - Employers are most likely to lose those employees who have been with the company between three and ten years, when they tend to be most productive.

--The Small Company Edge - Companies with fewer than 200 employees tend to have happier employees, with only 50 percent of those workers engaging in a passive or active job search in the last three months.

--Most Are Not Underpaid - Of the 65 percent who say they are considering leaving their jobs, 57 percent say they believe they are underpaid. By checking its latest compensation data for those respondents, Salary.com found that less than 20 percent of those workers were actually underpaid. In fact, detailed analysis of the latest compensation data from Salary.com shows that some of them are actually overpaid, which may reflect the "over-titling" trend of the past several years.

Where Are the Disconnects?

The survey also revealed major disconnects in employee and employer perceptions of job satisfaction that may be key learning points for company management and human resource professionals:

--Relationships Matter at Work - HR professionals focus on benefits and compensation and list the top factors of employee happiness as:

1. Adequate Benefits

            2. Friendly Co-workers

            3. Fair Compensation

However, employees in the survey rated the top three factors in overall workplace happiness as:

1. Friendly Co-workers

            2. Good Managers

            3. Desirable Commute

--Why Employees Leave - Employers rank poor relationships with managers in the top three reasons they think their employees leave, but only 10 percent of employees want to leave for this reason. In reality, dissatisfied employees cite inadequate compensation, no opportunities for advancement, and no recognition for their work as the top three reasons (in order) for leaving.

--Counter-offers. Salary.com found that roughly one third of employers never make counter-offers. Those that make counter-offers do it infrequently and offer only an average of 8.4 percent, which is just below the employee monetary threshold to stay.

--Monetary Threshold of Retention. Employees said that a 10 percent to 12 percent raise - surprisingly low - would make up for certain workplace shortcomings such as a poor benefits plan, bad working conditions, discrimination and lack of advancement.

About the 2005/2006 Employee Satisfaction and Retention Survey

During October and November of 2005, Salary.com invited a cross-section of individual employees and business representatives from across the United States to participate in its 2005/2006 Employee Satisfaction and Retention Survey. Prospective participants completed as many sections of the survey as they desired and submitted their results to Salary.com electronically.