Why Are We Losing All Our Good People Essay Example

retention.

It has already lost a few employees that were considered top talent in the firm. Though the reasons are varied, the bottom line remains the same, people are quitting Sambian Partners. The conversation during lunch in the kitchen gives interesting insight in the team’s perception of what possibly is not right in their workplace. There are underlying currents between the design and engineering team and the sales team. The case makes a reference to the firm’s loss of the Marko bid which had Tom leading with the right design but Paul who is the head of the architectures sales, does not do enough to sell the idea (at least that is he perception of a few team members). The team’s perception that Tom’s creative work lacked the support structure it needed to succeed gives an insight how the creative folks in the firm feel. They believe, he didn’t have a first class sales and marketing team behind him. There is mention during this conversation to compensation not being adequate to support Tom’s expanding family, while another colleague brings up a point of having quality of life if he has to be on the road continuously in his new job.

This leads to the question whether the firm is doing enough to look into changing needs of its workforce from a compensation point. Young people who are single may love the challenge of a job if there is accelerated growth at the cost of extra hours. The same people may choose to have a work life balance when they are no more single without having to give up on their careers. The case does not provide any

insights if the Firm is doing the needful to cater to their employees changing needs. Though the CEO believes they treat their people really well.

This cannot be supported with any facts mentioned in the case except for Mary’s attempt at advancing the yearly employee survey satisfaction is an attempt to gather this information. Another interesting point comes up is ‘career path’ for Tom. Speculation by colleagues that Tom chose to leave because he didn’t see himself grow as there was no potential opening in the executive team. Nobody on that team was close to retiring. Similar sentiment is echoed in the survey result about ‘deadwood in the project manager ranks’.

This brings to light another key aspect of the workforce at Sambian. The company has put in efforts to attract young, talented employees but has not provided them visibility into how their careers can grow with the company leading us to key issue of talent management. During Tom’s exit interview, Mary’s feeble attempts at trying to retain him come across as inadequate. Her attempts to lure him back with the idea of a possible promotion or questioning if the raise was insufficient, calls in question the existing feedback model in the firm.

Have they tried to build communication models where employees have clear visibility into their performance results? During our class we have looked into motivation where it is essential to have ’Performance-Outcome’ belief which provides the instrumentality factor of motivation. Considering Tom was on CEO’s short list of top-performers it comes as a surprise that Mary is trying to find the root cause of Tom’s unhappiness in an exit interview.

Has Mary and her team done the

needful to open the feedback channels? What is the current model to air grievance beyond giving anonymous feedback during the annual surveys. Helen, who is the CEO of the company, has done a good job of bringing the culture of innovation to the firm thus providing one of the desired behaviors of transformational leadership. But from the case it is apparent that Helen has inherited the role of leadership but has not yet completely acquired the skills of a good leader.