of course, it was great being on vacation.. had a ton of fun... only to come back and fine out that 1 more person is leaving the firm...
in the last 2 weeks, we've had 5 more people jump out and hit the ground running - away... we're down from 30 to 19 and we've probably lost a good 40-45 just in the last year alone.
so we had this big meeting today with the president of the company (who used to be our office manager) about retaining new employees and keeping the employees we have.. so far, the conversation was all about who he's meeting up with and what contacts he's got for bringing 11 new people on site...he's hoping to take us from our 19 people that we have left up to 76 by the end of 2006 (just too high of a number for me to believe it could actually be achieved!). but really, not much was said about retaining the people we still have...and then on top of that, we found out our office manager resigned, so we have to find a new office manager....
i've been with the company for 3 years, they're a good company, i think.. enough to stick it out.. but morale is so low and the talk of retention is just: stay positive...and if you want to give out a spot reward, nominate someone...but nothing more than that - at all...these spot rewards are just a way of nominating someone that's been doing a good job and having the company get them a $25-$100 gift certificate for some store, restaurante or what not... but to me, that really doesn't do much. Most of our employees need cash to keep the lights on and all that - how is a spot reward going to be any type of retention? we lost our yearly bonus already (haven't had one for 3 years now), there's no talk of a christmas party yet or anything from the company for working our asses off to even keep this office open and going and everything has turned into numbers.. it's all about staying 100% utilized, billable and it seems like the only thanks we get is "gee thanks, just be glad you've got a job"....
so i'm wondering -> what do your companies do for bonus's, as a "thank you" for jobs well done and to keep up morale when morale is essentially at it's lowest point?
big boss (president) says he won't let anyone else leave.. but we hear nothing from him as to how he's going to keep us from leaving and/or what his retention ideas are...he's pretty much offered us nothing except *stay positive*, isn't that kinda weird?
seems like we're losing almost a person a day now with the office manager resigning and bringing in a new office manager always has people on their toes because they don't know what to expect. granted, the old office manager really wasn't that great.. more of an engineer than a business man and not really a people person, so it'll probably be good to get someone new in office...but it really sucks working in such a low environment....makes me wanna say my 0.02 cents and see if i don't get fired for it!
I figure, hell, what do i have to lose?
the only reason i'm staying is because i like the team i'm in.. we all work well together and we've bonded as inside co-workers, outside friends and it's essentially my team that's keeping this office alive. I figure once my project manager decides to leave, where ever she goes, we'll all probably follow. she could easily take her whole team and leave, if she wanted to. I don't think she will.. but i'd hate to see my team break up because the big boss brings in new guys and gives them all sorts of lovely fluff (vacation, signing bonus etc) but does nothing except offer words (no action) to his only saving grace - his current employees.