RE: Re: RE: interviews and ethics

["Gene Kim-Eng" <techpubs -at- genek -dot- com>]

------- Original Message -------
On
Mon, 25 Aug 2003 11:52:29 -0700 Chuck Martin?wrote:


>Wouldn't paying employees who may be otherwise happy 
>working for you closer to the going rate be far less 
>expensive in the long term than the high cost of hiring
>somone new? (In both monetary and non-monetary costs.)

Sure, but that's the arguement for having a retention
program that periodically reexamines your compensations
and keeps valued employees current with the prevailing
market; by the time your employees are trying to get
raises by interviewing with other companies and using
their offers to try to blackmail you it's too late, 
you've already lost them from a happiness point of view
and they'll be gone sooner or later.  Once happiness is
gone, it usually doesn't come back just because there's 
a raise.

>One of the important things I look for in a job is >happiness. 

My experience, both as an employee and a manager, is that
the decision to take interviews is more emotional than it
is monetary.  Employees decide to interview because they
feel undervalued or abused (of course, discovering that
their current salary is 20% below the prevailing market goes
a long way toward making them feel that way).  Once they
start interviewing they may choose their next employer on
the basis of money - especially if they feel that *all*
employers will undervalue or abuse them - but that's not
what starts them down the road toward interviewing.

Gene Kim-Eng