By Murigi Macharia
When Beatrice Vundi suddenly quit her managerial position without warning, she left everybody wondering why such a promising manager would walk away from a great job.
Vundi later explained that it was due to frustration by her boss, who constantly belittled her and never gave any inspirational guidance besides ripping apart anything that was not his idea.
Then Vundi’s salary became the subject of great debate as some colleagues argued that they would put up with anything as long as Sh200,000 net pay she used to get kept coming.
Vundi had difficulties convincing anybody that her enviable pay package, which she had won through the much talked about performance related pay (PRP) was only one part of the many important things that matter at the workplace.
Green pastures
Many qualified and competent employees have left, and continue leaving great and promising organizations in search of green pastures even when those new pastures are not as green as the current ones..
These departures have in turn cost many organizations valuable assets in terms of trained, experienced and knowledgeable human resources who are unique to the affected organizations.
Question: Is money the only motivating factor to retain employees at their current employment? What other contractual incentives can employers put in place to retain their experienced workers?
Many skilled (or is it multi-skilled) employees hate sticking to organizations that do not promise promotion opportunities and personal career development through company-sponsored training and education.
Positive career development and training have become a major motivational issue at the modern workplace and organizations that encourage individual career growth remain popular with their employees.
Promotions come with better job titles, added status, recognition and possibly that much envied individualized office that many newly promoted employees long for.
Another major incentive that is being embraced by modern organizations is ensuring that major decisions are made in consultation with the workers.
Workers’ participation in management decisions gives them psychological satisfaction that their voices are being heard. There is a feeling of "ownership" of the corporate decisions.
Some organizations are known to reward positive suggestions from employees as part of their incentive systems. Feedback is another important incentive to keep employees motivated.
This includes appreciating work done by individual employees and rewarding those who go out of their way to put extra effort outside their respective job descriptions.
Sometimes a simple praise and a surprise backpat plays a major motivational trick among the employees.
Has management of your organization allowed you to buy and own shares of the company? This is a major incentive to keep experienced workers glued to the organization.
Besides being an incentive to working harder, ownership of shares by employees also means keeping disruptive industrial activities like strikes and go-slows out of the work-place.
No employee would want to destroy what they co-own.
Subsidized housing for employees, interest free car loans and mortgage facilities are major motivational incentives.
Terminal gratuity
Terminal gratuity is another key motivating factor that keeps faithful employees at the workplace. Many workers feel safe in the knowledge that they will walk home with a tangible amount of money when they are eventually retire.
Terminal gratuity is worked at an agreeable percentage of the employees’ basic salaries and ensures the employee does not suffer pecuniary embarrassment in retirement.
Cost cutting has become the mantra of many organizations as they struggle to survive the global financial glitch that has occasioned serious inflation in many countries.
But this is no excuse for your organization to deny you benefits such as medical, insurance cover, leave allowance and mileage.
These are among the other motivating factors that force millions of employees out of their current jobs.
As the year comes to a close, your organization should be preparing its employees for the end-year party.
The end year party is used to thank employees and for the management to chart the way forward for the coming year.
