So you\u2019re thinking about getting married.\u00a0 You go out and buy a ring with a diamond in it, you figure out a romantic place to ask, and then you get down on one knee and pop the question.\u00a0 Somehow, she says \u201cyes.\u201d\u00a0 They key is that there are probably a large number of reasons she is willing to get married to you, but one of them is not the fact that you presented her with a ring.\u00a0 The ring is one of those compulsory things that you just kind of have to have, but it was not the deal clincher.<\/p>\n
Similarly, salary and benefits are not engagement tools.\u00a0 The reason for this is that they are not differentiators.\u00a0 Everyone offers competitive salaries, and anywhere you go, the salaries will be within 10% of each other for similar geographies, similar skills and similar work.\u00a0 The same goes for benefits.\u00a0 The 401(k) and the health benefits can be better or worse, but probably are not factors for employees sticking around.\u00a0 Every employer is going to offer some form of benefits, and while the cost of benefits can vary greatly here, the value of these benefits is relatively lower now that most families have 2 income earners and so long as one of the partners has good benefits, the other can go wherever they want.<\/p>\n
I write this as I read FoT\u2019s post on the \u201canchors<\/a>\u201d that cause people to stay at your organization.\u00a0 It focuses primarily on salary and benefits.\u00a0 While I don\u2019t argue that these are contributors, I think we have all know for years that salary and benefits are really just a commodity in the engagement equation.\u00a0 So long as they are competitive with the rest of the employer market, salary and benefits don\u2019t differentiate your organization at all.<\/p>\n From a talent management perspective, I now ask a similar question – “What would happen if the government eliminated the anchors that ‘most’ employees perceive as the reason they work for a firm?”<\/p>\n Those anchors in my mind are – health insurance, retirement, income and stability.\u00a0 After those basic needs come the more esoteric, but important, elements of feeling recognized, feeling in control, feeling connected, etc.\u00a0 I say importance – but the right word might be “fear” – employees do some things for survival and fear before they worry about engagement.\u00a0 ((Herbert, Paul, December 22, 2009.\u00a0 \u201cAnswering Why Should People Want to Work at Your Company. Anchors Aweigh!\u201d\u00a0 Retrieved from http:\/\/www.fistfuloftalent.com\/2009\/12\/anchors-aweigh.html<\/a> on December 24, 2009.))<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Employee\u2019s decide what company to join based on opportunity, salary, and benefits.\u00a0 However, they stay for how much they love their jobs, if they are doing good work, if they like their peers, and appreciate their direct managers.\u00a0 Salary and benefits has not been part of the employee engagement equation for ages.\u00a0 IMHO.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So you\u2019re thinking about getting married.\u00a0 You go out and buy a ring with a diamond in it, you figure out a romantic place to ask, and then you get down on one knee and pop the question.\u00a0 Somehow, she…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[24,30,10,8,20],"tags":[74,450,437,99,98],"class_list":["post-1287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-benefits-management","category-compensation","category-engagement","category-strategies","category-talent-management","tag-benefits","tag-compensation","tag-engagement","tag-retention","tag-salary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1287"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1289,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1287\/revisions\/1289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}