You’ve probably heard about some of the employment trends that are sweeping across the nation, some of which have caught on and some of which have not.
An example of one that has not? Credit-card processing company Gravity Payments raised the minimum salary of its employees to $70,000 per year. The CEO of the company slashed his own salary in order to do it. (It might not be surprising why that one has yet to catch on.)
However, one trend that has apparently caught on is paying employees when they leave the company.
You read that correctly: paying employees when they leave. It’s called a “resigning bonus.” Among the companies that are doing this are Amazon and Zappos Shoes. Here’s what Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos wrote in a company letter when he announced the program:
“In the long run, an employee staying somewhere they don’t want to be isn’t healthy for the employee or the company.”
So is this insanity on the part of these companies . . . or is it genius?
If you can entice an employee to leave simply by offering them a few thousand dollars, do you really want them as an employee? Think about it. If an employee is truly engaged and satisfied with your organization and they’re passionate about what they do, would offering a “resigning bonus” tempt them to leave? No, it would not.
A company is at its peak when all of its employees are engaged, passionate, satisfied, and highly productive. If offering a “resigning bonus” helps to weed out those who are not all of those things, then is that not a shrewd personnel management move?
Upon further consideration, this is akin to “top grading,” which is the practice of continually replacing the bottom 20% to 25% of the company’s performers with A-level candidates. Only in this case, the companies are paying employees when they leave.
Is it a guarantee that all of the employees that leave are in the bottom 20% to 25%? No, it’s not, but if they’re unengaged and dissatisfied, chances are good that they’re not in the top 25%.
Think about your workforce for a moment. What would happen if you offered a “resigning bonus” to departing employees? Who would leave? Who would stay?
No matter the size of your company, all organizations have one thing in common: the need for the very best employees available doing what they love to do and providing tremendous amounts of value while they do it.
Does that describe your employees? If not, what must you do to make that a reality? Partnering with an experienced recruiting firm can help you to identify and attract the type of candidates who will bring the passion, excitement, and talent that can help take your organization to the next level.
It’s not necessarily bad when an employee leaves . . . just as long as you replace them with the type of employee you were looking for all along.
We help support careers in one of two ways: 1. By helping to find the right opportunity when the time is right, and 2. By helping to recruit top talent for the critical needs of organizations. If this is something you would like to explore further, please send an email to stacy@thevetrecruiter.com.