Greener Pastures

Despite the rising unemployment rate and the increasing number of extremely qualified professionals looking for jobs, smart companies continue to place an emphasis on keeping their employees and creating a work environment that prevents “greener pasture” syndrome.

Greener pasture syndrome in the workplace results when employees are not kept engaged and productive or do not have a sense of ownership. It is a major concern for those businesses that accept the paradigm that engaged employees will keep customers happy and that when employees leave or start searching for greener pastures it can be a big problem.

Employees are the face of a business. They build the relationships with customers and know a company from top to bottom. They drive company culture and reinforce this culture with new employees and customers.

Successful companies have embraced the importance of making their pasture the greenest. This approach really proliferated during boom times when the jobs were plentiful and qualified workers were few and far between and faced with many different options. However, now that the pendulum has swung and qualified workers abound while jobs are scarce, companies need to be careful not to contract a case of the “greener pasture” syndrome in regards to their employees.

The attitude that any employee can simply be replaced with someone better, because there are so many good options out there today, reflects a dangerous ideology. Even if this belief is not widespread or disseminated throughout the company – which would be disastrous – its mere presence is enough to trigger cause for concern.

A key factor for keeping employees loyal and in place is engagement and ownership and not money. Money can certainly buy you loyalty and improve employee retention, but without the other factors it is a hollow victory. Financially stable employees may be happy to some extent, but if they are not engaged and do not feel connected to their work this will most certainly be reflected in poor customer relations.

So just in the same way that splashing the cash won’t fix the greener pastures problem, company executives should not let the money issue muddy the value they place on current employees. It is a fact that in today’s economic climate and employment marketplace most businesses could replace employees with outsiders who could do the same job for less money, and would be perfectly willing to do so. But companies are taking a dangerous gamble that the result would be an equal employee, especially on the grounds of engagement and ownership.

How long would it take for the loss of company experience and cultural participation to equal any salary gain made on an equally qualified, but new, employee? How long would it take for the savings on new employees to outweigh the overall cost on company morale and atmosphere the strategy of replacing current workers with new, cheaper workers would bring?

Once employees realize that company executives have fallen prey to the greener pasture syndrome, they will not be far behind in doing so likewise – and company failure will certainly be on the horizon.