The job of retaining quality employees is not the sole responsibility of the human resources department, though too often managers abdicate their role in the process somehow believing that HR professionals will single-handedly create job satisfaction for their staff.

Employee job satisfaction is not just about having a job and receiving a paycheck, although all too often that’s what people believe. No, instead it is about creating the type of atmosphere where people love to come to work.

I recently read an article about why employees stay at companies they truly dislike and was appalled to read that the author found that employers relax their “vigil on attracting and retaining employees in tough times” when “there is no compelling reason to be an employer of choice.”

Granted, this article is a few years old, but the message is still important. Having high levels of job satisfaction is important during good times as well as difficult times.

The good news is that this same article said “great companies use these down times to enhance their competitive advantage over the other players in their market segments” by continuing to focus on good retention strategies.

This means that managers, regardless of what transpires in the world outside, should continue to strive toward building a workplace that provides employees with job satisfaction. Why?

Because even when there is no hiring boom …

• some companies may still be looking for top talent, and pick away at yours leaving behind only the uninspired survivors who won’t go until you kick them out the door.
• when a hiring boom reemerges (and it always does), you could find your company in a crisis hiring situation.
• the way you treat your employees will get around and when a hiring boom hits, no one will want to work for your company.

So regardless of whether you are experiencing good times or difficult times, think of employee job satisfaction as part of your regular routine. You grab a cup of coffee, check your email and send a thank you note to your assistant for a wonderful job on the ABC project. It’s that easy!

This entry was posted on Friday, October 27th, 2006 at 9:14 am and is filed under Employee Retention, Company Culture, Job Satisfaction. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will appear immediately, but I reserve the right to delete innapropriate comments.