Question: How important are pay and benefits?

Answer: Pay ands benefits are very important. Pay is a scorecard of how valued we are, so it sends a very important signal about our worth. Benefits are increasingly important in these times when so many companies are cutting back on benefits. Pay is more important to some types of employees than others, such as sales people. And pay is more important to workers who are struggling just to survive and pay bills, obviously.

The research shows that pay and benefits are a much bigger part of the equation in attracting employees than in retaining employees. The Saratoga Institute exit data I analyzed from surveys with 19,700 departed employees showed that 12 percent of the respondents became disengaged because of various forms of dissatisfactions about pay. That puts pay among the top three reasons for voluntary turnover, but it also leaves 88% of employee departures traceable to reasons other than pay.

Question: What are some of the things that the best places to work do to keep good people?

Answer: Before hiring, many companies are starting to invest time and money in understanding the competencies required for a job. Then, they carefully assess candidates against those competencies in the hiring process. By following this disciplined process, they reduce mismatches. The state of Georgia's social welfare department invested in finding out what made some of their agents really good at collecting child support payments from deadbeat parents. They compared the "stars" to average performers by observing and recording what they did differently. Based on that they developed a new competency profile, used it to assess candidates, and got much better matches. The agents hired with the new profile each gathered $200,000 per year more for the agency, which saved the state $100 million dollars.

As for giving employees more coaching and feedback, that's mostly a matter of recognizing that most managers have never been trained in these competencies and don't feel very comfortable using them. I teach a managers a process called "Get-Give-Merge-Go," meaning that instead of just telling employees to do better or taking a parent-child approach to correcting poor performance, they first get (ask for) the employee's perspective, and only after they have done that do they then give their perspective about the employee's performance. Then they merge mutual perspectives into an agreement, and finally, they agree on an action plan. This is an adult-to-adult approach that communicates respect and can significantly reduce avoidable turnover.

Many employees quit because their managers don't know how to do career coaching with them. Employers should provide management training on how to be a career coach or do workshops for employees on how to take charge of their careers. Without quality career discussions, employees end up leaving and then the manager says, "I wish I'd known you were thinking of leaving because I had plans for you."

Organizations can also survey employees about the people-management abilities of their managers. Managers themselves are often not getting feedback and they are not being held accountable for retaining people. It keeps coming back to two things--training and accountability.

Employees' view of senior leaders is tremendously important. Employees watch what senior leaders do and don't do. The tip of the iceberg is turnover, but the bulk of the iceberg, invisible under water, is disengagement. Seventy-five percent of the workforce is not engaged. Disengagement often happens when employees see things in their senior leaders that make them lose trust.

I believe strongly in servant leadership. David Neeleman, founder of JetBlue Airline, is a great example of someone with an attitude of being there to serve employees. That is hard for some senior leaders because they think there is too much worker entitlement already. Senior leadership has to make a decision whether to give to the workforce first or wait for them to give to the firm. When you look at the lists of best employers, many of those CEOs have the attitude of "give first, then get back." I believe that attitude is what's needed going forward.

Question: What are some of the "subtle signs" that an employee may be thinking of leaving?

Answer: Actually, the signs vary depending on the reason. For example, a sign an employee may be thinking of quitting is that the last time they received performance feedback was six months or more ago. A sign that an employee may leave because of frustrations with career advancement is when they start applying for a succession of internal positions for which they may be unsuited or unqualified. Any employee who works for an abusive manager is probably vulnerable to being lost to the organization because of feeling unrecognized or devalued. Overworked employees consistently work late, work through sickness, take work home, and may eventually appear increasingly cynical, forgetful, or irritable-all signs they are burned out and ready to move on to a more sane work environment.

BusinessBookReview.com has selected The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave as one of only 30 business books it will review in 2005, out of more than 4,500 business books released each year, according to BBR's CEO, John Fayad. For more information, visit http://www.businessbookreview.com

Executive Soundview will release a condensed summary of The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave in June, 2005 on a CD that also features a condensation of Malcolm Gladwell's best-seller-Blink. Both summary recordings are narrated by the authors. To purchase this CD, visit: http://www.summary.com/cgi-bin/Soundview.storefront.

For discounts on volume purchases of The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave, contact Renita Hanfling, AMACOM Books Special Sales, rhanfling@amanet.org, or call (212) 903-8316.

June 15-17, 2005: "The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave and Stay: Linking Individual Choices with Workplace-of-Choice Strategy," pre-conference workshop at the "Workplace-of-Choice" conference sponsored by the American Strategic Management Institute, San Diego, California. For more information, contact Eleanor Rollings at (858) 874-6876, or by e-mail at erollings@managementweb.org, or visit ASMI's website-http://www.managementweb.org.

July 7, 2005: "54 World Class Engagement and Retention Best Practices and Practical Tools" one-day seminar, Workforce Engagement and Retention Conference, June 6-8, Hilton Shanghai, Shanghai, China, sponsored by LNOPPEN Shanghai Co. business information providers. For more information, contact Fay Wang at fayw@lnoppen.com.

July 12, 2005: "The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave," to the Human Resource Management Association, Jayhawk chapter, Lawrence, Kansas. For more information, contact Ann Connor at (785) 830-7310.

July 20, 2005: "The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave," to the Society for Human Resource Management, Wichita, Kansas. For more information, contact Jeff Adams at (316) 636-2322.

August 17, 2005: "Behavior-Based Interviewing Basics," public workshop, Kansas City, Missouri. For more information, call (913) 620-4645.

October 13, 2005: Kansas City Compensation and Benefits Association Presentation, "The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave" breakfast presentation, Crown Center Westin Hotel. For more information, contact Mike Marino at michael.marino@mail.sprint.com.

November 9, 2005: "Family & Workforce Friendly" Recognition Breakfast, Kansas City Marriott Hotel, "Conquering Reason # 6: Workload Burnout and Work-Life Imbalance." For more information, contact Nancy Mitchell, Midwest Childhood Development Group, Overland Park, Kansas at (913) 341-6200 (ext. 12).

November 14, 2005: "Engaging and Retaining All Generations of Workers," Organizational Forum, Las Vegas, Nevada, sponsored by The Advanced Management Institute, contact Cynthia Crenshaw at ccrenshaw@ami-institute.com.

February 1-3, 2006: "You Can't Afford the Luxury of Another Bad Manager," Toronto, Canada, Human Resource Professional Association of Ontario (HRPAO) Annual Conference. For more information, contact Christianne Warda, at c_warda@sympatico.ca.

KCUR-FM Radio "Up-to-Date" interview on The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave with host, Steve Kraske, Kansas City, Mo., March 15, 2005. To listen, go to: http://www.kcur.org/programArchiveSearchResp.asp.

BusinessBookReview.com in-depth review of The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave, March, 2005. To read this review, go to: http://www.keepingthepeople.com/pdfs/7HiddenReasons_BBR_Full_Review.pdf

National Public Radio "Marketplace Report" interview segment with NPR business reporter, Tess Viglund on The Root Causes of Employee Turnover, April 27, 2005. To listen, go to: http://marketplace.publicradio.org/shows/2005/04/28/AM200504284.html.

HR Magazine, review of The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave, May, 2005. To read this review, go to: http://www.shrm.org/hrmagazine/articles/0505/0505books.asp.

FastTrac Connections, a publication of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, "Writing Opens Doors to New Business," May 1, 2005. http://peernet.org/pages/news/FastTrac.peer?recidnews=32850

Quoted in Associated Press, article on Persuading Employees Who Quit to Change their Minds and Stay, by Joyce Rosenberg, May, 2005. To read, go to http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/external/archive.ap.org/?SITE=APWEB&SECTION=HOME.

Harvard Management Update, quoted in article on "Great Managers Are Great at Managing Talent", June, 2005 issue. To read, go to: http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu/hmu

Soundview Live Worldwide 2-Way Audio Conference: July 27, 2005: Sponsored by Executive Soundview Book Summaries, on the topic of "The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave," 1 pm Eastern. For more information, contact Tanya Nagyhetenyi at (800) 521-1227 ext 2298.

Do you have a story to share about why you chose to leave a former employer or why you chose to stay? Can you recall a turning point when you first started thinking of leaving and tell us about how it led to your leaving an organization? We are also interested in what an organization or a manager did to inspire your loyalty.