A reader writes:
My brother-in-law works for a company of about 600 people, which has about 80 branches in several cities across North America. His department had three employees who served his branch in an HR-type capacity. An employee left, and only he and his manager were left to handle their caseload. This was fine. Then the manager left.
The branch managers called my brother-in-law and told him he was now the acting manager, but there would be no raise “at this time”, but they appreciated his work and knew he could handle the opportunity. While his caseload increased, he was able to shift work to other branches so as not to have to work late at night or for long hours. Nevertheless, he was now in charge of a large branch department.
He immediately began looking for other employment opportunities and after four months secured a better position elsewhere.
If they had offered $10,000 or so in starting salary, I wouldn’t even be writing this letter. But in such a situation, why don’t companies think about increasing the salaries of employees? (Even good workplaces?)
Now, the old company must:
• Go through the hiring process (Cost #1)
• Bring in a temporary manager from another branch (cost #2)
• Train someone who is new to the organization (Cost #3)
• There are probably some hidden costs I haven’t thought aboutMeanwhile they lost a person who was considered strong enough to head their department with a title bump, but not strong enough to get a salary bump.
I am constantly confused.
They underestimate people’s willingness to leave. they know people can do Holiday; They don’t think that the person will have trouble doing it.
This is obviously absurd; People leave jobs all the time. But employers often overestimate their power in these situations.
The other thing that is often seen is that the employer doesn’t really care that much if a person leaves. They figure if that happens, they’ll hire someone new – which they will. And yes, the costs involved in doing this (all those you’ve laid out, plus the opportunity cost from hiring someone new who will take some time to master the job) generally exceed the amount of raise they would have to give to retain that person, so the math doesn’t add up from that perspective.
Also, if they have to replace the exiting employee with an external employee, they will likely have to pay the external hire more than they paid the person who left – because the new hire coming in from the street is much less likely to be accepted than an internal hire like “We’re hiring you for a manager job but paying you for a level below that because the money just isn’t there.”
For what it’s worth, it’s possible that they didn’t want to hire your brother-in-law permanently to the manager job and intended him to be an interim fill-in while they looked for a permanent appointment (which is why he was just the acting manager). If that’s the case, fine, they got the interim job for a while at no extra cost, and they won’t care so much that there’s turnover in their starting role now.
However, what most often happens is that they understand them can do Exploit people and they do.
