HR as a hopeless romantic

Here’s a personal over-share. I’m a hopeless romantic. Which is a terrible attribute to possess when choosing a profession that gets the same validation as a ‘pay by the hour mall cop.’ My naive, and often innocent perception, is that every employee is engaged, energized, and elevating their job performance as frequently as they post a perfectly filtered selfie. #nofilter #iAMthatTAN

Here’s the cold hard truth.

Money motivates. Cash is back on top is 2014. Dollar $igns rule.

Money is not supposed to be the most important thing in our world. Love is. But fortunately for the 2014 workforce (and for my hopeless romance), we admittedly love money.

Recent studies by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) shows that ‘Total Compensation’ is the top contributor to overall job satisfaction for the 2014 workforce. This all together is not hard to digest. The real eye opener is learning that just as recently as 2010 this factor had slid to fifth in importance.

It seems that employee’s patience is running low as employers sluggish salary increases during the post-recession economy have not met the expectations in recent years.

The struggle is real. In the past years I’ve had my fair share of observing a full employee lifecycle. Compensation is negotiated and agreed upon before the first day of employment. That means the employee is able to assess the value of the top factor for job satisfaction PRIOR to ever even deciding the first day outfit. All invested parties are able to assess perceived equity for the exchange of #workflow for #bankroll.

Flash forward to an often uncomfortable exit interview. I’m sitting in the office with a steno pad asking the exiting employee to assess pressure points on a scale of 1-10. It’s often not until it’s too late that I learn the hard truth about the other contributing factors to employee satisfaction. The same SHRM study shows that the relationship with co-workers and the employee’s immediate supervisor are pivotal in employee engagement.

Sure, satisfaction sits in our bank account, but according to SHRM, satisfaction also sits with us at lunch, plays in our company kickball league, and sends us the silliest of Snapchats. Satisfaction in the work place is no longer boxed into 4 walls and sitting behind desk barking orders at you. Employees are finding great engagement in relationships. Coworker relationships rank in the top 5 of factors and can often compensate for lack of compensation. So that common bond of sitting through that ‘mandatory online training’ is bringing teams together.

Relationships matter. In those infamous exit interviews, my colleagues don’t get emotional about losing the paycheck, they get emotional about the ‘people’ they’ve met and the friends they’ve gained. My counsel to business leaders is to make sure you cultivate an environment where professional relationships can thrive. This cultivation can come in many forms, from giving formal feedback to sending the hard working department to the local sports game for a night out in that comp’d suite you have in your back pocket.

Rounding out the top 5 most important conditions to engagement encompass the employee’s ability to contribute to the company’s mission by using their specific skill set. The trick is being able to directly tie in the daily churn of a job to the vision of a company. Harder said than done. Try teaching a dishwasher that his role is providing an ‘elevated entertainment experience’ to the guest who just bought 3 magnums of vodka while hip thrusting until 5 am. My solution is a continuous over delivery of the mission of the company. Keep it at the forefront of employee’s minds, almost to a point where it feels a little obnoxious.

Just this week I spent time in front of the total population of employees of one of our venues. I shared with them some statistics worth douting here. Over 34% of that hourly population has been on payroll for over 3 years, with over 12% for over 5 years, and 4 people have celebrated a 10 year anniversary with our 12 year old company. Those numbers are well above the industry norm. This population carries our brand, trains our workforce, and continues to deliver at a level that impresses every day.

I guess the hopeless romantic in me sees enough to keep my nativity alive. #dontjudgeme