The good news is that high performers are more satisfied with their jobs and less likely to leave a company within the next six months than low performers. The not-so-good news is not by much.
A study by Oxford Economics and SuccessFactors, a provider of HR cloud-based solutions, indicates that one in five high performers is likely to leave in the next six months (versus one in four of employees overall who are likely to leave in the near term). And less than half of high performers are satisfied with their jobs.
“Our workforce strategy goal should be to double down on retention tactics for high performers. We need improvement,” says Karie Willyerd, Senior Vice President of Learning and Social Adoption at SuccessFactors and co-author of the “The 2020 Workplace.” “And based on some compelling – and even alarming – discoveries in our research, high performers may not be getting what they need from their managers.”
The most important contributor to job satisfaction for all employees was base pay, followed by bonus pay. High performers cared significantly more about both of these factors than average or low performers. Tenure based or compensation strategies with little differentiation between high and low performers are likely to alienate your high performers the most. The difference between a 2 percent raise and a 6 percent raise, as is common in many compensation strategies, is not significant enough to keep high performers who have more options in the marketplace.
A second contributing factor to job satisfaction was feedback: “How often do your managers sit down with employees to discuss their performance? Chances are, not enough,” Willyerd says. Fifty percent of high performers say they expect at least a monthly sit-down with their managers, but only 53 percent say their manager delivers on their feedback expectations. If you are relying on annual or semi-annual performance reviews as the primary feedback mechanism with your employees, your high performers are likely to need a more frequent boost and will begin to show signs of underappreciation.
