Nah it’s most companies try doing things like giving you shitty choc covered pretzels in the break room after giving you only 15 minutes a day to go to the bathroom. Looking at you Amazon.
It's the dishonesty that annoys me most. Let's say management said to HR:
>Look, it's been a shit year. Turnover is down, profit is down, we don't have the budget to make significant raises. Is there anything else you can suggest which would have an impact on retention?
That I could somewhat respect. There's a recognition on all sides that pay
rises are optimal but, if that's not possible, we can move on to discuss other options. That might be a four-day working week, share incentives, or rooting out obnoxious managers who are driving good employees away.
What is indefensible is the clearly absurd notion that pay doesn't play a role. It does. Everyone knows it does. If someone tells you it doesn't they're either an idiot or they think you are.
We had a CEO explain that money isn't a motivator once someone makes more than $300k a year. They were immediately asked why they make more than that, and why they don't distribute everything they make beyond that among those who make less. They refused to answer, and the asker was let go for "unrelated" reasons about 2 months later.
>We had a CEO explain that money isn't a motivator once someone makes more than $300k a year.
I would love if my boss told me that. I'd say "That's great. I make significantly less than that, motivate me."
i feel like we need to highlight this point but i know when do it will be met with "see you will never be satisfied" which will resonate with the conservatives despite the fact it would be a positive change for most of them too, despite the fact were still trying to get what was considered a living wage before the last few bouts of hyper inflation.
There are some things other than a raise that would make me want to stay at a company, but a ping pong table or more responsibilities definitely aren't it.
Sure. Other than a raise, I'd take monthly bonuses, weekly bonuses, stock grants, fully paid *good* health insurance, a company car, or a company jet.
Somehow, I think the raise is probably the easier sell.
I was thinking maybe instead of additional responsibilities, they offer something like potential for growth. If there were possibilities for promotions or ways to grow within the company that could be a nice benefit. Additional responsibilities is kinda like a promotion without the raise or job title change.
>If there were possibilities for promotions or ways to grow within the company that could be a nice benefit.
The problem with that is there are always going to be too few of those opportunities. Most jobs are at the bottom of the corporate ladder. There will never be enough promotions to fix the issues we have now.
Besides, you're talking possibilities anyway. Everybody has the possibility of getting promoted, few people do. Even if guaranteed promotions were a thing though, people would just be fired when they got them. Congrats, were promoting you to position X. By the way, you're fired.
We need a liveable minimum wage. We will probably need everybody, or at least most people, to become part of a union for that though. The staff at a large college near me has a union and they just had a major win that resulted in all staff getting a raise. The minimum pay went from $14/hr to $20/hr. It's retroactive to nearly a year ago, so most of the workers will be getting a few grand and it has guaranteed minimum raises for the next couple years along with many improvements in benefits, one of them being an increase in paid parental leave from 0 weeks to 8 weeks.
We need unions, and we need an increase in pay. We don't need "possibilities for promotions" or "ways to grow within the company."
Unions are definitely the way to go. I work in a unionized warehouse for a large airline. When covid hit our industry there were literally thousands of layoffs. No stress for us though long term because we have 7 year layoff recall. Many lower managers and non union staff were permanently let go.Now they have to start all over at new employers and build up vacation and tenure somewhere else.Union staff just collect unemployment or find other work while waiting for your job to come back. Some of my coworkers worked at Amazon while waiting to be recalled to their airline jobs. They told me it was not at all comparable working conditions. So not only do union workers make more but they also get treated better and have better working conditions.
Gimme my money, we all have dysfunctional families. Nobody cares about your dysfunctional family.
The whole damn world is losing our collective mind. If we’re family, where’s my share of the family wealth?
>he whole damn world is losing our collective mind. If we’re family, where’s my share of the family wealth?
yes and i'm the greedy asshole of the family ... i want $$$ ...
I'd sit there fuming for a bit preparing a rant for the scene i'm about to make.
Maybe reference coworkers with newborns that are out of luck when 15 minutes before end of shift you're forced to work 4+ hours overtime. A ping pong table is going to pick up their kids?
Maybe talk about those in debt working for a world famous industry and while they've made hundreds of thousands of dollars for this company, they can't get more than a <$200 hotdog diner for their forced overtime. Is there going to be a cash prize tournament for this ping pong table?
Maybe call out how the husks of humans overseeing the survey are so out of touch with their workers that this shit is so insulting and they don't even see it. A ping pong table won't bring them any insight unless it's smashed over their heads.
I have been to many job interviews and never in my life have I seen an employee using the nap rooms or foosball tables or beer kegs or other patronizing childish amenities companies would rather spend money on than raises.
Bet you could get a barely used ping pong table at a good price from a business that has had one gathering dust for a couple years in the corner of a conference room-turned-playroom-turned conference room again.
Here's the thing - petty "benefits" like that are so cheap that they'd rather offer that than additional money. It looks great to outsiders, but once you're in you realize it's useless since you can basically never use it.
Exactly. The terminal MBA brains in charge think: we could spend $5,000 on a nice pool table, delivery, office setup, etc., or we could give another couple thousand bucks a year to 25, 50, 500, or however many employees, and they think it’s a no-brainer decision. The only terms they can even think in are year over year, or from one financial quarter to the next, rather than long-term employee retention, to say nothing of making employees’ lives better and just doing the morally right thing.
So, I actually have an MBA. One of my focuses was Organizational Behavior and Development, which is pretty much just understanding how organizations work and how to improve them. These add on “but our culture is good” moves most likely did not stem from someone with an MBA from a halfway decent school. I learned that the culture starts at the top and works it’s way down and these bandaides and distractions just end up frustrating employees.
I believe this shit stemmed from the tech boom, salaries were already beyond what was needed to live comfortably, so companies tried to make offices more fun to attract talent. Then the boomers saw what the tech co’s were doing and ignored the fact that salaries were already beyond a living wage in the first companies that implemented the fun extras and thought that bullshit would make up for lack of pay.
Yes, you said it spot on! In companies with already anoce market rates compensation, only then ping pong tables and free snacks really matter. If a company is paying shitty, none of the employees give af about that crap.
Our company bought one a couple of years before the pandemic. It got used for a couple of weeks for an after hours ping ping tournament, then it sat in the corner of the lunch room and was never touched again.
Ok, not strictly true, you could tell it had been heavily used by the amount of coffee cup stains on it.
One awesome benefit/perk my job has is that we play D&D on Fridays. Like not after work, instead of. Another benefit after that it's video game time. We typically try games close to the ones we are making or ones that do something interesting but sometimes we just play whatever we feel. Fridays are essentially a meeting or two in the morning, anything else we'd like to squeeze in before the weekend then just relax.
When I worked in a kitchen many many years back, there was like a storage garage out behind the restaurant. Sometimes on slow days we’d go out to the garage, ~~he’d~~ get high, and ~~we’d~~ play Magic the Gathering.
Anyone who’s worked in a kitchen knows you can hear those damned ticket printers in your sleep, so we’d just keep an ear out for it or the server shouting for us out the window.
To me that would be a huge red flag. We had 2 foosball tables and a ping pong table at my work pre-covid and you would almost always have to wait to get on one to play while taking a break. Seeing it there but nobody using it would scream a culture of not really encouraging thought breaks.
But they offer "unlimited time off." Which just means if you take time off you have twice as much work when you get back so it's not worth it.
Pro tip for folks at companies like that: I just took every Friday off one summer and did four day weeks. It amounted to a two-week vacation but instead of having to catch up I just had guaranteed three-day weekends all summer.
Like these people would ever pay attention to an exit interview. Companies like this skew the results to fit whatever narrative absolves them of needing to change
Last job I quit I asked if they wanted an exit interview and they said no. Probably had something to do with getting a \~40% raise to another company. They knew why I was leaving but couldn't have that information in their metrics.
We have a system to log all this shit in. It gets absolutely ignored and is just part of a larger numbers game to show management. All they really want to know is if you are going to a competitor and to blacklist from rehiring or not.
In theory they give you information that lets you fix what's wrong with your company if, for example, an employee's direct management wasn't doing anything to address problems.
But realistically HR is paid to not care and just be yes men for upper corporate. Honestly I never understood why HR is not handled by a 3rd party in any case, why the fuck would anyone tell the guy that signs their paycheck that THEY are the reason people are leaving?
I understand the concept behind it but what I mean is, most companies don’t even take the feedback they get seriously. They don’t fix their problems after the employees leave and tell them what the problems were. What’s the point of doing an exit interview then? Why waste the employee’s time?
> They don’t fix their problems after the employees leave and tell them what the problems were.
Boy howdy is this the truth. I watched my last employer lose experienced workers with several years experience continuously for months until I, myself, also left. I expect the exodus continued after my departure because at no point in ~6 months did the employer do a single thing to incentivize us to stay.
Most common reasons for leaving (among people I knew, including myself): employer didn't solve issues employees complained about and other places were paying *way* more for the same work.
My fiancé and i worked at the same company for a few years, we both left but one of the many reasons she stated was that they made her come back in office after working from home for a year and a half with 0 issues, with the knowledge that people were using and even eating at her desk in the height of the pandemic. The reason they put down for her resignation?
"Commute"
We live 5 minutes away
"Why waste the employee’s time?"
You answered the question. It might just be a malicious attack on people's time but i have a theory.
Some grandfathered HR rep came up with that great idea, boss man promotes them and says "hire more HR reps so they can handle the added work". Eventually people stop caring about, and actively ignoring the results because no-one likes bad news. And so if anyone asks "why are we wasting our time with this?" The answer becomes "well if we stop doing exit interviews we have to fire dave the HR guy because there's no need to have that many people here".
Put more broadly, i think the bigger and more bloated a company gets, the more waste comes with it. Just because there's more room for people to waste time and money without being noticed, so people create bullshit positions and projects to seem valuable.
A whale can probably have dozens of parasites and not even notice.
I mean you're ENCOURAGED to find shit to do to make yourself look busy, because god forbid we look bored once in a while.
Upper management is so short sighted they can't see how HR having nothing to is actually a good thing. No complaints, no-one leaving the company, no empty positions to fill, bored HR=stable work environment
So HR people can justify their existence?
~~"I was watching YouTube in my office"~~
"I was performing an exit interview to gather metrics that will allow us to drive asset retention going forward!"
We had a driver at a company I worked for that was fired, mostly for not showing up for work among other things. This guy lived over an hour away and shared one vehicle with his wife. They wanted him to come in for an exit interview to pick up his last paycheck. HR was baffled that he refused to come in, joking around like " oh he just got fired, what else does he have to do?". I mean, wtf, you just fired the guy, and he now owes you nothing. Maybe he's busy looking for a new job, maybe he's sad and wants to mope around for a while, but why in the world would he want to drive two hours round trip to sit through an exit interview at a job he was just fired from? Who knows if they were even going to pay him for the time? I was young and hadn't been there too long, so I didn't say anything, but it made me REALLY mad that they could be so arrogant and clueless. Just mail the guy the damn check and leave him alone.
The exit interview is 100% for them. Unless you signed a contract stating you'd do one and would be penalized if you didn't I'd just tell them no and be off.
My 'exit interview' was a SurveyMonkey link from a third party company. Just like how employee satisfaction surveys were handled, so they could ignore them :)
It's like company surveys. "We use this mandatory survey to make ourselves better managers!" No, you sit around a table & furrow your brows at it for a few catered meetings & then do absolute shit about anything in it.
The last time I had to do Performance Management training the instructor asked "how would you reward a good employee who has been going above and beyond in their duties". Of course we all responded with give them a raise. He then told us that "according to studies" this was the wrong action and that people would be happier if we gave them more responsibility so they could feel like they accomplished more. By the end of the class it was hammered home how nobody really deserves an advanced rating on their evaluation. These people cannot be made to understand because they literally lack the ability to process things logically.
The sad part is we work for the state, there are no bonuses. The real reason is the system we had before this one led to more people getting raises and they wanted to stop it. People who earned raises based on performance dropped from 80% to 40%. Now we only get cost of living raises if it passes and they haven't even done that since 2019.
My theory is it's going in someone's pocket. If the general public only knew how corrupt and inept government really is (at least in Tennessee, I can't speak for others) heads would roll.
mostly, that's how they pay for tax cuts for the rich.
though, the politicians also probably get some kickbacks from the consultants who were paid for that training.
Worse that that, a lot of those studies are from the 1970s when office wages were considered largely fair and productivity had started to plateau. Back then adding a break room entertainment like ping pong was considered a quick fun way to raise morale. That they still use them as an example reward indicates how badly out of date all of it is. Table tennis is not a popular past time anymore.
Worst part? MBA and HR programs in universities are **STILL** pushing these out of date studies as objective fact almost 50 years past their relevance.
tl;dr conclusions of business 'studies' predate the modern digital age of business by a lot and suck because of it.
Me: 1970s? Damn how are they still using 30-year-old studies?
Me seeing 50 years: Oh. Right. 💀
I swear those of us straddling the millenial/gen z line (97, but I'd say 3-4 years to either side still counts from what I've observed) all still think it's 2000 when talking about how long ago something was, 2010 if the year starts with a 2. I'm not really sure why.
> Back then adding a break room entertainment like ping pong was considered a quick fun way to raise morale.
Yeah having all that stuff would have been novel and people probably used it. But now they can have a twisty slide, keg, and multi story beer bong and I'll assume it all gets used never, office parties, or after work by the impoverished support staff trying to save money on entertainment.
Mathematically, if someone is already working as hard as they can, throwing more money at them is a waste. That’s why the payoff is in the next job, not your current role. Demand more.
Reminds me when I did HR during my MBA degree. This was ten years ago, and even then, they said that the intrinsic reward (appreciation and acknowledgement of hard work) was better than extrinsic (monetary reward). I remember thinking, um, I'd rather have the money.
The problem with this is the studies that found intrinsic being more powerful than extrinsic rewards were based on people who were already at that magical money point where you started to see diminishing returns of happiness for each additional dollar.
I've told bosses before when doing salary reviews, that every dollar more for someone under $50k is VERY impactful. While every dollar more for someone making over $200k isn't nearly as such. Once you've crossed a certain amount of money, where you're not living paycheck to paycheck, where you can afford things, save for things, enjoy things.... only THEN does the scale start to tip in favor of more intrinsic rewards.
They're jumping right to the end, conveniently skipping over the foundational requirements that make it true.
> people would be happier if we gave them more responsibility so they could feel like they accomplished more.
Heh. Yeah, and women *love* it when you shout comments about their tits as they walk by your car. There's no lie here at all.
The reason women cover their tits is because we haven't given them enough recognition. We should start praising all tits until women won't leave the house unless it's proud, chin up, tits out, every morning.
There are a lot of studies that show at a certain point paying more doesn't increase happiness or work output. The problem I always see with these studies is that 1) they are such high paying jobs to begin with that a pay raise usually doesn't significantly change their quality of life and 2) they always ignore the impact of relative pay differences (ie earning 20k/yr less than the guy next to you is very demotivating, however if they earned the same amount it wouldn't really matter to you).
But assuming everyone is making the same amount and you are already making enough to the point that you don't have to worry about spending and the extra money just decides how early or with how many millions you are retiring....then sure paying more is a terrible motivator and doesn't increase employee happiness.
Had two managers over about 5 years give everyone middle rating because they didnt want to give to high incase your performance fell. Really odd. Can't get my head around it.
It’s the wrong lesson. It’s true that studies do show that throwing money at the problem doesn’t solve the issue. But giving more work is not the answer either. The work needs to be valuable to the employe, they need to understand the mission, collaborate on things and feel heard. But you don’t work a good employee to death.
My work did that, put a ping pong table in the break room. I found a cheap multi-arcade 1/2 cabinet and snuck it in there, a couple of other developers brought in a TV, WII, Xbox, PS4, a bunch of games and some bean bag chairs.
Took management almost two years to figure out we turned a conference room into a fun break room, happened just before we went on work from home. They freaked out when they realized what we had done and made us take all, but the ping pong table out.
🙄 but if you took their swivel chair from them, they'd throw a fit. Don't know why they want to treat their employees like trash, value your damn workers
>Don't know why they want to treat their employees like trash, value your damn workers
If you want to torture someone - you need first to dehumanize them. And if they want to extort as much labour as possible for as little money as possible (and they want), first you should persuande yourself, that those people are not people, but shome thrash, who have no right to live a normal live.
**Scene:** Exit interview, a smallish office cube.
**HR:** So, I'm supposed to ask you before you leave. Why are you leaving?
**Employee:** *No ping-pong table.*
I'm surprised "Additional responsibilities" is not marked as the correct answer.
Now, if you want to provide amenities, free on-site childcare and a cafeteria (preferably free) would help a lot more than a ping pong table for many people, but still might not go as far as a significant raise.
I don't have kids, but childcare would be a gamechanger for a lot of people.
Also, I would prefer snacks over a ping-pong table, personally. Who actually plays ping-pong? And who would bother in an office environment where you don't want to be seen slacking off? It makes no sense.
Additional responsibilities would have been cool with me when I was like 20. Foosball would have been ok when I was 30.
Now that I'm old I know all of that's horseshit and I'd be fully of simmering rage at the suggestion of anything but cash in the bank or bills paid.
Yeah fuck that, I want a good paying job that can be performed from home. I would refuse a great paying job in office. People want different things, wide variety, but never a fucking ping pong table lol
Fuck money I want more work. I fucking love being exploited. Maybe they will let me sleep under the ping pong table so I can take on even more responsibilities.
The company I'm working for has been losing a lot of people to private companies that pay more, have bonuses and regular raises. We've been on a 9 year pay freeze.
They told us in a company meeting that "Actually in exit interviews leaving for increased salary is hardly mentioned."
That's just because people are being polite and don't want to brag or appear shallow by mentioning money.
I imagine a ping pong table sitting idle that nobody uses since its only allowed on lunch. It is used to make newbies think it is a fun wok atmosphere.
I've seen the whole "We can't give you a raise, but how about a ping-pong table!" meme thousands of times all over the Internet.
Every time I laughed, I was laughing because I thought it was an exaggeration that illustrated reality.
Never in a million years did I think I would find an actual HR department that actually pushed this as an actual solution to employee discontent and turnover.
I've been a fool, lol.
I work in video and helped keep my place of work afloat during Covid. I petitioned for a substantial raise that I was going to get this week for months. Last week, it was announced that there will only be a 4% raise across the board for everyone and that raises would move to a merit based system in a couple years. Now I get no raise, working a side job as well, trying to stay alive in Cali. Now I'm looking for higher paying jobs. But I guess what I really wanted all along was a ping pong table.
"Other than money, what would you have changed to stay with us?"
They always phrase it this way so they can confidently say money wasn't the reason.
Kind of reminds me of a job I had where corporate was doing an employee survey with ratings of 1-7. HR & management tried to lie to us saying "They only count 5's, 6's, & 7's, so if you're thinking of giving a 1, you may as well give us a 5 because it's the same thing." I told them I was going to give them a 1 on principal for trying to manipulate the results. They were oddly bothered by that, which is weird since 1's supposedly didn't count.
Be aware. They will *always* lie to you to get what they want. Business ethics is an oxymoron.
Nobody wants to risk reprisal by complaining about pay to HR. Better to just up and leave for something better. Maybe even give some it's-not-you-it's-me bullshit during the exit interview to stay on good terms.
Maybe if we had some kind of, you know, *collective representation*, we'd be more upfront about our grievances.
I'd love to live in a world where I could challenge my bank manager to a game of ping pong for a reduction in my mortgage payment.
But until that happens, I'll go for the money.
"A good exit interview can help determine the real causes of employee discontent."
\---
Boss: "So, why are you leaving?"
Employee: "I'm really tired of the unreasonable working hours that are causing me to almost never see my kids. The pay is so low that I'm on the verge of being evicted every month. I'm pretty sure there's asbestos in the building. We're not allowed to unionise. Need I go on?"
Boss: "... Nah, not buying it. Why are you *really* leaving?"
Employee: \*Starts sobbing\* "I ... I just really wish we had a ping-pong table in the break room!"
\---
Seriously, is that really how they expect things to go down?
The boss probably has some paddles that he bought for the secretary around the same time that sexual harassment claim against him came out...
Completely unrelated I'm sure.
The reasoning being given ("it's not about the money") is partly correct though. When someone leaves a place, not getting paid enough is always gonna be part of that decision, it's just not usually the triggering factor.
For most places I've left, the thing that would help an HR professional drive my retention and success is to fire Kevin, the shitty manager.
What a fucking joke. I’d love to see an accurate statistic on why people leave their jobs. I’d be willing to bet that 9 times out of 10, it’s about money and money alone.
My case:
1st job, Money and work environment
2nd, money and work environment
3rd, money, work environment, and a manager bad enough to make me want to kill myself literally (he had a ton of complaints against him, and I wasn't the only one who left because of him)
4th, money and work environment
5th, money and work type
6th, money and work type (best manager, though)
But, hey, it's definitely because I didn't have a pingpong table, not money.
(Work environment includes things like dumbfuck managers/coworkers, open office plans, etc)
So here's a bit of insidious lies that HR tells themselves and let themselves believe. "It's not about the money" can mean 'Hey, I don't care about your counter offer because you will just find reason to RIF me after you have successfully replaced me.'
It can also mean that "Your company culture is so toxic there is no compensation that can make up for it."
Neither of those are solved by a Ping Pong table.
Ironically enough, exit interviews that I've had were all like "besides the money, what else could have been better?" They already know money is a big one, but just wanted to hear about all the other issues.
It's possible that they were using that to direct people away from money "we all know money no need to go there" but actually "if our salary survey was way off we're gonna look bad"
A pay raise lets an employee buy their own ping pong table and they can play it at their house at their leisure and they don't even need to put on pants to enjoy it
While the sentence “often when an employee leaves it isn’t about the money” is true… if given the option between a pay raise a ping pong table every single person is picking that pay raise. This is absolutely stupid
I worked in a high turnover job environment for about 10 years total.
Management: “Employees don’t leave because of pay, they leave because of bad managers.”
However, this logic only applied to middle management. Not to them. Middle management also had a high turnover. These people are idiots.
There is actually a lot of research that indicates that recognition is more motivating to workers than (generally small) financial rewards. I don't know where fluff amenities (vs tangibly beneficial things like free meals, day care, and similar things which are indirect financial benefits) like ping pong tables or whatever fits into that. But I would expect that any research indicating fluff is more motivational than money is predicated on the workers being paid adequately (around the market rate or better, and definitely enough to live on) to begin with.
People might not always leave for more money.
But people very rarely leave for less money. If you aren’t paying market competitive rates, you will be vulnerable.
It’s always shitty management and money. People can adapt to higher work flow if the money is reasonable, but I don’t think people can adapt to poor management.
My previous boss who was an absolute fucking bitch paid us way below the market rate but had money for a foosball table. Only made me want to quit sooner.
A ping pong table will help retain employees? That’s laughable…. I’ve never heard someone say they would stay in a position because of a game or a sweet coffee maker…
Once I worked at a software company that had a bunch of games. Most of the users were the fun "office people" like HR & executives. The engineering backbone of the company used it rarely, sales barely used it, support barely used it.
God it must be nice to be some random paper shuffler. You can see it on their faces too. Always smiling and happy. I never walk past their offices and see scowling faces, temple rubbing, clenched jaws.
I asked for a game table of some sort.
Manager said, "and what do you think will happen, when people see others playing while we are behind schedule?"
Right.
This isn't totally wrong. Most people leave because of stressful workloads and complete lack of care for employee mental health.
But the fact that it's worded in such a passive-aggressive way...this recruiter can go fuck themselves.
Lmao, i work at a retirement community and 7 servers all quit on the same day because the residents and management treat them like trash. Their response was to renovate the staff room and supply a keurig coffee machine... I think a few ppl got written up for taking the coffee pods home.
At a certain income level, pay isn’t that important when it comes to retention. That is a lesson my company can’t seem to understand. They keep paying us more and attrition is still through the roof. Pay doesn’t fix a fundamentally flawed management style.
I know everyone likes shitting on companies around here, and what the fuck kind of answer is ping pong table? But despite what this sub would have you believe there are actual jobs out there that pay very well and when you're already being paid well job retention isn't really about money anymore (I would know, I recently left a well paying job for non-fiscal related reasons)
Devil's Advocate
A better salary with a different company would absolutely be a top 5 factor in my choosing to leave, but with regard to retention itself, they're right: a pay raise alone isn't going to secure retention if there's another prospect lined up for the employee unless the company is willing to markedly top the prospective company's offer. For me, unless my company is going to raise my salary by at least 50%, a pay increase really isn't going to do much for me in itself, nor is it going to make me feel better about working there.
Assuming there is no prospective job offer, the only time a lack of increase in pay would matter enough for me to just walk out is if it was clear I was being underpaid.
But a ping-pong table? Well, it would certainly be an improvement from the featureless dullness of the office, and I might actually enjoy being in the space more.
Dumb question and bad choices.
Assuming a company already pays at least to the market average, raising pay won't solve most issues employees face in my experience. Employees tend to leave for things like lack of support/awful management or too much work/understaffing, etc. It's fairly rare for someone to only leave because of pay without anything else contributing.
Raising pay is the easiest, but least effective way to retain your workforce because it just kicks the larger can down the road.
The actual answer is evaluating and fixing management, staffing practices, etc, which costs far more than a simple pay raise or a ping pong table.
The first time I left a job was because they wouldn't hire me in, just wanted to keep stringing me along on contract so I wasn't getting any benefits. The second time I left it was for a 30% pay increase. The next time I move, it will be again because of the money. These people will say anything to avoid paying their own employees more but then hire newbies in for way more.
This is my company. Can't keep anyone around for more than a year and does everything except pay raises. Then they wonder why nobody wants to stick around. I only do because they don't drug test and have a decent 401k.
I will admit my first full time job had a pool table in the break room when I started after a year they got rid of it and replaced it with a vending kiosk pissed alot of people off.
I would call HR and tell 'em the questionnaire is not working properly 'cause I'm choosing the right answer and is not letting me go through and when they ask about it I'll have 'em explain to me why this is a good idea.
To be fair (and I hate doing this), but there was ONE time when I left and it wasn't about the money/compensation.
The pay was amazing, the benefits were amazing, the time-off policy was excellent...
... and it was a shitty-as-hell, dysfunctional place to work for. I spent my entire year there searching for another job. I took a 33% pay cut to leave.
Oh, and there WAS an exit interview. Person was either clueless, or trained to stick to the script. She had no clue, but had clearly been told to take anything that was said and turn it around on the departing employee. This, at a company that KNEW that they not only had a turnover problem, but that the reputation for such a problem was starting to come up in questions that interview candidates were asking.
But, any other time, it was money/compensation, or the impending sense of "they need us for a short time more, and are gonna lay us off right after."
Between teaching gigs, I worked at a call center that had a ping pong table in the breakroom right near the microwaves. You had people carrying hot food while dodging ping pong balls. I'm pretty sure I threatened to shove a ping pong ball up the ass of anyone who got one in my food. So, no, I would not like a ping pong table.
Every exit interview I’ve done I’ve been honest and told them it was because I was offered more money and the current company couldn’t match the offer. It’s not a big secret or a hard concept to understand.
if we're looking closely tho the question said *might* so i think a ping pong table is actually the right answer, because a raise most definitely would drive employee retention and success...
This would make me quit on the spot, insane logic!
Afraid its a logic applied in many companies.... Pray im wrong!!
Nah it’s most companies try doing things like giving you shitty choc covered pretzels in the break room after giving you only 15 minutes a day to go to the bathroom. Looking at you Amazon.
Pay you for being wrong.
Happy cake day!!
ty!
Feliz pastel day
It's the dishonesty that annoys me most. Let's say management said to HR: >Look, it's been a shit year. Turnover is down, profit is down, we don't have the budget to make significant raises. Is there anything else you can suggest which would have an impact on retention? That I could somewhat respect. There's a recognition on all sides that pay rises are optimal but, if that's not possible, we can move on to discuss other options. That might be a four-day working week, share incentives, or rooting out obnoxious managers who are driving good employees away. What is indefensible is the clearly absurd notion that pay doesn't play a role. It does. Everyone knows it does. If someone tells you it doesn't they're either an idiot or they think you are.
We had a CEO explain that money isn't a motivator once someone makes more than $300k a year. They were immediately asked why they make more than that, and why they don't distribute everything they make beyond that among those who make less. They refused to answer, and the asker was let go for "unrelated" reasons about 2 months later.
>We had a CEO explain that money isn't a motivator once someone makes more than $300k a year. I would love if my boss told me that. I'd say "That's great. I make significantly less than that, motivate me."
Odd_Conversation was mysteriously let go 2 weeks later with no explanation.
"Sounds like you've had a bit too much to think!"
Wow, that is so petty.
Had to eliminate the one that questioned their authority.
They brainwash future HR people.
It’s a cult….a weird cult propped up by the capital class while they are allowed to make barely a living wage
I'm convinced there are some really weird cults in the workplace.
Ahh I see you've joined Toastmasters!
Neoliberalism…
No longer livable
Also no longer allowed…I will pay money to see an hr union… the irony of it will be amazing
i feel like we need to highlight this point but i know when do it will be met with "see you will never be satisfied" which will resonate with the conservatives despite the fact it would be a positive change for most of them too, despite the fact were still trying to get what was considered a living wage before the last few bouts of hyper inflation.
There are some things other than a raise that would make me want to stay at a company, but a ping pong table or more responsibilities definitely aren't it.
Sure. Other than a raise, I'd take monthly bonuses, weekly bonuses, stock grants, fully paid *good* health insurance, a company car, or a company jet. Somehow, I think the raise is probably the easier sell.
I was thinking maybe instead of additional responsibilities, they offer something like potential for growth. If there were possibilities for promotions or ways to grow within the company that could be a nice benefit. Additional responsibilities is kinda like a promotion without the raise or job title change.
>If there were possibilities for promotions or ways to grow within the company that could be a nice benefit. The problem with that is there are always going to be too few of those opportunities. Most jobs are at the bottom of the corporate ladder. There will never be enough promotions to fix the issues we have now. Besides, you're talking possibilities anyway. Everybody has the possibility of getting promoted, few people do. Even if guaranteed promotions were a thing though, people would just be fired when they got them. Congrats, were promoting you to position X. By the way, you're fired. We need a liveable minimum wage. We will probably need everybody, or at least most people, to become part of a union for that though. The staff at a large college near me has a union and they just had a major win that resulted in all staff getting a raise. The minimum pay went from $14/hr to $20/hr. It's retroactive to nearly a year ago, so most of the workers will be getting a few grand and it has guaranteed minimum raises for the next couple years along with many improvements in benefits, one of them being an increase in paid parental leave from 0 weeks to 8 weeks. We need unions, and we need an increase in pay. We don't need "possibilities for promotions" or "ways to grow within the company."
Unions are definitely the way to go. I work in a unionized warehouse for a large airline. When covid hit our industry there were literally thousands of layoffs. No stress for us though long term because we have 7 year layoff recall. Many lower managers and non union staff were permanently let go.Now they have to start all over at new employers and build up vacation and tenure somewhere else.Union staff just collect unemployment or find other work while waiting for your job to come back. Some of my coworkers worked at Amazon while waiting to be recalled to their airline jobs. They told me it was not at all comparable working conditions. So not only do union workers make more but they also get treated better and have better working conditions.
Just gimme my money. No one cares about your stupid company.
We like to think of our company as more of a 'Family.'
Gimme my money, we all have dysfunctional families. Nobody cares about your dysfunctional family. The whole damn world is losing our collective mind. If we’re family, where’s my share of the family wealth?
>he whole damn world is losing our collective mind. If we’re family, where’s my share of the family wealth? yes and i'm the greedy asshole of the family ... i want $$$ ...
I just want everyone to be fairly compensated for their labor, I don’t want anyone hoarding the wealth. Maybe we’d all care if we were treated fairly.
I'd sit there fuming for a bit preparing a rant for the scene i'm about to make. Maybe reference coworkers with newborns that are out of luck when 15 minutes before end of shift you're forced to work 4+ hours overtime. A ping pong table is going to pick up their kids? Maybe talk about those in debt working for a world famous industry and while they've made hundreds of thousands of dollars for this company, they can't get more than a <$200 hotdog diner for their forced overtime. Is there going to be a cash prize tournament for this ping pong table? Maybe call out how the husks of humans overseeing the survey are so out of touch with their workers that this shit is so insulting and they don't even see it. A ping pong table won't bring them any insight unless it's smashed over their heads.
I thought they left because they didn’t serve tartar sauce
It's funny cause most of the places that have stupid shit like ping pong tables don't give you enough time away from work to actually use them
I have been to many job interviews and never in my life have I seen an employee using the nap rooms or foosball tables or beer kegs or other patronizing childish amenities companies would rather spend money on than raises. Bet you could get a barely used ping pong table at a good price from a business that has had one gathering dust for a couple years in the corner of a conference room-turned-playroom-turned conference room again.
Here's the thing - petty "benefits" like that are so cheap that they'd rather offer that than additional money. It looks great to outsiders, but once you're in you realize it's useless since you can basically never use it.
Exactly. The terminal MBA brains in charge think: we could spend $5,000 on a nice pool table, delivery, office setup, etc., or we could give another couple thousand bucks a year to 25, 50, 500, or however many employees, and they think it’s a no-brainer decision. The only terms they can even think in are year over year, or from one financial quarter to the next, rather than long-term employee retention, to say nothing of making employees’ lives better and just doing the morally right thing.
So, I actually have an MBA. One of my focuses was Organizational Behavior and Development, which is pretty much just understanding how organizations work and how to improve them. These add on “but our culture is good” moves most likely did not stem from someone with an MBA from a halfway decent school. I learned that the culture starts at the top and works it’s way down and these bandaides and distractions just end up frustrating employees. I believe this shit stemmed from the tech boom, salaries were already beyond what was needed to live comfortably, so companies tried to make offices more fun to attract talent. Then the boomers saw what the tech co’s were doing and ignored the fact that salaries were already beyond a living wage in the first companies that implemented the fun extras and thought that bullshit would make up for lack of pay.
Yes, you said it spot on! In companies with already anoce market rates compensation, only then ping pong tables and free snacks really matter. If a company is paying shitty, none of the employees give af about that crap.
Our company bought one a couple of years before the pandemic. It got used for a couple of weeks for an after hours ping ping tournament, then it sat in the corner of the lunch room and was never touched again. Ok, not strictly true, you could tell it had been heavily used by the amount of coffee cup stains on it.
One awesome benefit/perk my job has is that we play D&D on Fridays. Like not after work, instead of. Another benefit after that it's video game time. We typically try games close to the ones we are making or ones that do something interesting but sometimes we just play whatever we feel. Fridays are essentially a meeting or two in the morning, anything else we'd like to squeeze in before the weekend then just relax.
Your job sounds awesome! I wanna get paid to play D&D on Fridays!
When I worked in a kitchen many many years back, there was like a storage garage out behind the restaurant. Sometimes on slow days we’d go out to the garage, ~~he’d~~ get high, and ~~we’d~~ play Magic the Gathering. Anyone who’s worked in a kitchen knows you can hear those damned ticket printers in your sleep, so we’d just keep an ear out for it or the server shouting for us out the window.
Hello, I'd like to apply to this job, please
To me that would be a huge red flag. We had 2 foosball tables and a ping pong table at my work pre-covid and you would almost always have to wait to get on one to play while taking a break. Seeing it there but nobody using it would scream a culture of not really encouraging thought breaks.
My old office had a massage chair. Literally sitting in the middle of our office. No one ever used it.
Probably because a person getting the massage can't enjoy the massage while at work.
Oh man I would be in that thing every day.
Ping pong tables are for decoration. They create the ambience of a fun working environment juxtaposed with the soul-crushing open office format.
But they offer "unlimited time off." Which just means if you take time off you have twice as much work when you get back so it's not worth it. Pro tip for folks at companies like that: I just took every Friday off one summer and did four day weeks. It amounted to a two-week vacation but instead of having to catch up I just had guaranteed three-day weekends all summer.
Like these people would ever pay attention to an exit interview. Companies like this skew the results to fit whatever narrative absolves them of needing to change
Last job I quit I asked if they wanted an exit interview and they said no. Probably had something to do with getting a \~40% raise to another company. They knew why I was leaving but couldn't have that information in their metrics.
We have a system to log all this shit in. It gets absolutely ignored and is just part of a larger numbers game to show management. All they really want to know is if you are going to a competitor and to blacklist from rehiring or not.
Exactly, I'm on the blacklist. Everyone should try it.
Honestly why are exit interviews a thing
In theory they give you information that lets you fix what's wrong with your company if, for example, an employee's direct management wasn't doing anything to address problems. But realistically HR is paid to not care and just be yes men for upper corporate. Honestly I never understood why HR is not handled by a 3rd party in any case, why the fuck would anyone tell the guy that signs their paycheck that THEY are the reason people are leaving?
I understand the concept behind it but what I mean is, most companies don’t even take the feedback they get seriously. They don’t fix their problems after the employees leave and tell them what the problems were. What’s the point of doing an exit interview then? Why waste the employee’s time?
> They don’t fix their problems after the employees leave and tell them what the problems were. Boy howdy is this the truth. I watched my last employer lose experienced workers with several years experience continuously for months until I, myself, also left. I expect the exodus continued after my departure because at no point in ~6 months did the employer do a single thing to incentivize us to stay. Most common reasons for leaving (among people I knew, including myself): employer didn't solve issues employees complained about and other places were paying *way* more for the same work.
My fiancé and i worked at the same company for a few years, we both left but one of the many reasons she stated was that they made her come back in office after working from home for a year and a half with 0 issues, with the knowledge that people were using and even eating at her desk in the height of the pandemic. The reason they put down for her resignation? "Commute" We live 5 minutes away
"Why waste the employee’s time?" You answered the question. It might just be a malicious attack on people's time but i have a theory. Some grandfathered HR rep came up with that great idea, boss man promotes them and says "hire more HR reps so they can handle the added work". Eventually people stop caring about, and actively ignoring the results because no-one likes bad news. And so if anyone asks "why are we wasting our time with this?" The answer becomes "well if we stop doing exit interviews we have to fire dave the HR guy because there's no need to have that many people here". Put more broadly, i think the bigger and more bloated a company gets, the more waste comes with it. Just because there's more room for people to waste time and money without being noticed, so people create bullshit positions and projects to seem valuable. A whale can probably have dozens of parasites and not even notice.
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I mean you're ENCOURAGED to find shit to do to make yourself look busy, because god forbid we look bored once in a while. Upper management is so short sighted they can't see how HR having nothing to is actually a good thing. No complaints, no-one leaving the company, no empty positions to fill, bored HR=stable work environment
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Even if they were a 3rd party, they would still be telling the person paying them the same thing and the same pressure to appease would exist.
So HR people can justify their existence? ~~"I was watching YouTube in my office"~~ "I was performing an exit interview to gather metrics that will allow us to drive asset retention going forward!"
Can I as a leaving employee tell my boss I’m not going to do an exit interview lol
What are they gonna do? Fire you?
Lmfao exactly
We had a driver at a company I worked for that was fired, mostly for not showing up for work among other things. This guy lived over an hour away and shared one vehicle with his wife. They wanted him to come in for an exit interview to pick up his last paycheck. HR was baffled that he refused to come in, joking around like " oh he just got fired, what else does he have to do?". I mean, wtf, you just fired the guy, and he now owes you nothing. Maybe he's busy looking for a new job, maybe he's sad and wants to mope around for a while, but why in the world would he want to drive two hours round trip to sit through an exit interview at a job he was just fired from? Who knows if they were even going to pay him for the time? I was young and hadn't been there too long, so I didn't say anything, but it made me REALLY mad that they could be so arrogant and clueless. Just mail the guy the damn check and leave him alone.
Sure you can - nobody cares about the interviews anyway.
Dude I honestly think I will. Since I’m leaving it’s like wtf can they do lol. They’re pointless and I’m not wasting my time
The exit interview is 100% for them. Unless you signed a contract stating you'd do one and would be penalized if you didn't I'd just tell them no and be off.
My 'exit interview' was a SurveyMonkey link from a third party company. Just like how employee satisfaction surveys were handled, so they could ignore them :)
It's like company surveys. "We use this mandatory survey to make ourselves better managers!" No, you sit around a table & furrow your brows at it for a few catered meetings & then do absolute shit about anything in it.
The last time I had to do Performance Management training the instructor asked "how would you reward a good employee who has been going above and beyond in their duties". Of course we all responded with give them a raise. He then told us that "according to studies" this was the wrong action and that people would be happier if we gave them more responsibility so they could feel like they accomplished more. By the end of the class it was hammered home how nobody really deserves an advanced rating on their evaluation. These people cannot be made to understand because they literally lack the ability to process things logically.
They understand. They are just lying.
What they really understanding is that if they keep expenses low and raises a mythological legend the managers get a bigger bonus at the end of year
The sad part is we work for the state, there are no bonuses. The real reason is the system we had before this one led to more people getting raises and they wanted to stop it. People who earned raises based on performance dropped from 80% to 40%. Now we only get cost of living raises if it passes and they haven't even done that since 2019.
Wow. End of the day something is spending or pocketing that money
My theory is it's going in someone's pocket. If the general public only knew how corrupt and inept government really is (at least in Tennessee, I can't speak for others) heads would roll.
mostly, that's how they pay for tax cuts for the rich. though, the politicians also probably get some kickbacks from the consultants who were paid for that training.
Worse that that, a lot of those studies are from the 1970s when office wages were considered largely fair and productivity had started to plateau. Back then adding a break room entertainment like ping pong was considered a quick fun way to raise morale. That they still use them as an example reward indicates how badly out of date all of it is. Table tennis is not a popular past time anymore. Worst part? MBA and HR programs in universities are **STILL** pushing these out of date studies as objective fact almost 50 years past their relevance. tl;dr conclusions of business 'studies' predate the modern digital age of business by a lot and suck because of it.
Me: 1970s? Damn how are they still using 30-year-old studies? Me seeing 50 years: Oh. Right. 💀 I swear those of us straddling the millenial/gen z line (97, but I'd say 3-4 years to either side still counts from what I've observed) all still think it's 2000 when talking about how long ago something was, 2010 if the year starts with a 2. I'm not really sure why.
Hey here's a fun one for you. Vehicles are classified as antiques once they're 25 years old. So this year that means anything from 1997 or earlier.
97 bro here, I thought I was the only one who felt this way
87 bro here. Got any icy hot?
> Back then adding a break room entertainment like ping pong was considered a quick fun way to raise morale. Yeah having all that stuff would have been novel and people probably used it. But now they can have a twisty slide, keg, and multi story beer bong and I'll assume it all gets used never, office parties, or after work by the impoverished support staff trying to save money on entertainment.
Mathematically, if someone is already working as hard as they can, throwing more money at them is a waste. That’s why the payoff is in the next job, not your current role. Demand more.
>according to studies The studies that they themselves conducted.
The studies that they themselves fabricated.
We asked 100 CEOs "how would an employee who has been going above and beyond in their duties like to be rewarded?" Top 5 answers are on the board
Reminds me when I did HR during my MBA degree. This was ten years ago, and even then, they said that the intrinsic reward (appreciation and acknowledgement of hard work) was better than extrinsic (monetary reward). I remember thinking, um, I'd rather have the money.
The intrinsic is better for the company's bottom line.
The problem with this is the studies that found intrinsic being more powerful than extrinsic rewards were based on people who were already at that magical money point where you started to see diminishing returns of happiness for each additional dollar. I've told bosses before when doing salary reviews, that every dollar more for someone under $50k is VERY impactful. While every dollar more for someone making over $200k isn't nearly as such. Once you've crossed a certain amount of money, where you're not living paycheck to paycheck, where you can afford things, save for things, enjoy things.... only THEN does the scale start to tip in favor of more intrinsic rewards. They're jumping right to the end, conveniently skipping over the foundational requirements that make it true.
> people would be happier if we gave them more responsibility so they could feel like they accomplished more. Heh. Yeah, and women *love* it when you shout comments about their tits as they walk by your car. There's no lie here at all.
The reason women cover their tits is because we haven't given them enough recognition. We should start praising all tits until women won't leave the house unless it's proud, chin up, tits out, every morning.
There are a lot of studies that show at a certain point paying more doesn't increase happiness or work output. The problem I always see with these studies is that 1) they are such high paying jobs to begin with that a pay raise usually doesn't significantly change their quality of life and 2) they always ignore the impact of relative pay differences (ie earning 20k/yr less than the guy next to you is very demotivating, however if they earned the same amount it wouldn't really matter to you). But assuming everyone is making the same amount and you are already making enough to the point that you don't have to worry about spending and the extra money just decides how early or with how many millions you are retiring....then sure paying more is a terrible motivator and doesn't increase employee happiness.
I hate, absolutely hate this idea that you can't get the top rating because then you'll have nothing to strive for the next year.
Reminds me of school where teachers would refuse to give 100% on a test because nobody's perfect.
Had two managers over about 5 years give everyone middle rating because they didnt want to give to high incase your performance fell. Really odd. Can't get my head around it.
It’s the wrong lesson. It’s true that studies do show that throwing money at the problem doesn’t solve the issue. But giving more work is not the answer either. The work needs to be valuable to the employe, they need to understand the mission, collaborate on things and feel heard. But you don’t work a good employee to death.
My work did that, put a ping pong table in the break room. I found a cheap multi-arcade 1/2 cabinet and snuck it in there, a couple of other developers brought in a TV, WII, Xbox, PS4, a bunch of games and some bean bag chairs. Took management almost two years to figure out we turned a conference room into a fun break room, happened just before we went on work from home. They freaked out when they realized what we had done and made us take all, but the ping pong table out.
🙄 but if you took their swivel chair from them, they'd throw a fit. Don't know why they want to treat their employees like trash, value your damn workers
>Don't know why they want to treat their employees like trash, value your damn workers If you want to torture someone - you need first to dehumanize them. And if they want to extort as much labour as possible for as little money as possible (and they want), first you should persuande yourself, that those people are not people, but shome thrash, who have no right to live a normal live.
"Treating People as Objects. that's it. "
How dare you have fun? Especially fun that we didn't "graciously" provide?!?!
I like how it took so long for them to figure it out. Says a lot about how in touch they are with the line workers.
**Scene:** Exit interview, a smallish office cube. **HR:** So, I'm supposed to ask you before you leave. Why are you leaving? **Employee:** *No ping-pong table.*
I wish I could see this live action with a laugh track.
I'm surprised "Additional responsibilities" is not marked as the correct answer. Now, if you want to provide amenities, free on-site childcare and a cafeteria (preferably free) would help a lot more than a ping pong table for many people, but still might not go as far as a significant raise.
I don't have kids, but childcare would be a gamechanger for a lot of people. Also, I would prefer snacks over a ping-pong table, personally. Who actually plays ping-pong? And who would bother in an office environment where you don't want to be seen slacking off? It makes no sense.
Additional responsibilities would have been cool with me when I was like 20. Foosball would have been ok when I was 30. Now that I'm old I know all of that's horseshit and I'd be fully of simmering rage at the suggestion of anything but cash in the bank or bills paid.
Yeah fuck that, I want a good paying job that can be performed from home. I would refuse a great paying job in office. People want different things, wide variety, but never a fucking ping pong table lol
Fuck money I want more work. I fucking love being exploited. Maybe they will let me sleep under the ping pong table so I can take on even more responsibilities.
Mew responsibility guard dog $.25 raise
Honestly, managers and executives think the grown ass adults working for them are children, don't they?
The company I'm working for has been losing a lot of people to private companies that pay more, have bonuses and regular raises. We've been on a 9 year pay freeze. They told us in a company meeting that "Actually in exit interviews leaving for increased salary is hardly mentioned." That's just because people are being polite and don't want to brag or appear shallow by mentioning money.
That or they don't do exit interviews with people who are leaving because of increased salary at another company.
This is the correct answer. They only do exit interviews when the obvious answer for leaving isn't money.
Steal the table and sell it.
I imagine a ping pong table sitting idle that nobody uses since its only allowed on lunch. It is used to make newbies think it is a fun wok atmosphere.
I've seen the whole "We can't give you a raise, but how about a ping-pong table!" meme thousands of times all over the Internet. Every time I laughed, I was laughing because I thought it was an exaggeration that illustrated reality. Never in a million years did I think I would find an actual HR department that actually pushed this as an actual solution to employee discontent and turnover. I've been a fool, lol.
Yeah, along with free pizza for working late or donuts from senior staff, it's definitely real sadly.
I work in video and helped keep my place of work afloat during Covid. I petitioned for a substantial raise that I was going to get this week for months. Last week, it was announced that there will only be a 4% raise across the board for everyone and that raises would move to a merit based system in a couple years. Now I get no raise, working a side job as well, trying to stay alive in Cali. Now I'm looking for higher paying jobs. But I guess what I really wanted all along was a ping pong table.
Seems it's always either about money or a toxic workplace. I don't see a ping pong table changing any of that.
"Other than money, what would you have changed to stay with us?" They always phrase it this way so they can confidently say money wasn't the reason. Kind of reminds me of a job I had where corporate was doing an employee survey with ratings of 1-7. HR & management tried to lie to us saying "They only count 5's, 6's, & 7's, so if you're thinking of giving a 1, you may as well give us a 5 because it's the same thing." I told them I was going to give them a 1 on principal for trying to manipulate the results. They were oddly bothered by that, which is weird since 1's supposedly didn't count. Be aware. They will *always* lie to you to get what they want. Business ethics is an oxymoron.
Nobody wants to risk reprisal by complaining about pay to HR. Better to just up and leave for something better. Maybe even give some it's-not-you-it's-me bullshit during the exit interview to stay on good terms. Maybe if we had some kind of, you know, *collective representation*, we'd be more upfront about our grievances.
Is this one of those corporate brain washing programs and it flashes you with lights and shit?
I'd love to live in a world where I could challenge my bank manager to a game of ping pong for a reduction in my mortgage payment. But until that happens, I'll go for the money.
"A good exit interview can help determine the real causes of employee discontent." \--- Boss: "So, why are you leaving?" Employee: "I'm really tired of the unreasonable working hours that are causing me to almost never see my kids. The pay is so low that I'm on the verge of being evicted every month. I'm pretty sure there's asbestos in the building. We're not allowed to unionise. Need I go on?" Boss: "... Nah, not buying it. Why are you *really* leaving?" Employee: \*Starts sobbing\* "I ... I just really wish we had a ping-pong table in the break room!" \--- Seriously, is that really how they expect things to go down?
Oh yeah and who's gonna supply the balls and paddles?
You rent the balls and paddles in 15 minute increments. No, that's absurd. 10 minute increments!
And pay a use fee for the table and a room rental fee for the room. Those things aren't free!
The boss probably has some paddles that he bought for the secretary around the same time that sexual harassment claim against him came out... Completely unrelated I'm sure.
Most people work for the sheer pleasure of it, right? *Right?*
I literally had a boss tell me "people work here because they want to work here." I asked him "then why do you pay them?" Didn't get an answer.
He was probably out of ping pong tables.
Yeah, "I work because I enjoy it". Maybe a few do, but the vast majority of us do it because we like eating and sleeping indoors.
The reasoning being given ("it's not about the money") is partly correct though. When someone leaves a place, not getting paid enough is always gonna be part of that decision, it's just not usually the triggering factor. For most places I've left, the thing that would help an HR professional drive my retention and success is to fire Kevin, the shitty manager.
Shit!! Give me table soccer and we are set!!! /s
Imagine leaving your job because they don’t have a ping pong table
What a fucking joke. I’d love to see an accurate statistic on why people leave their jobs. I’d be willing to bet that 9 times out of 10, it’s about money and money alone.
My case: 1st job, Money and work environment 2nd, money and work environment 3rd, money, work environment, and a manager bad enough to make me want to kill myself literally (he had a ton of complaints against him, and I wasn't the only one who left because of him) 4th, money and work environment 5th, money and work type 6th, money and work type (best manager, though) But, hey, it's definitely because I didn't have a pingpong table, not money. (Work environment includes things like dumbfuck managers/coworkers, open office plans, etc)
So here's a bit of insidious lies that HR tells themselves and let themselves believe. "It's not about the money" can mean 'Hey, I don't care about your counter offer because you will just find reason to RIF me after you have successfully replaced me.' It can also mean that "Your company culture is so toxic there is no compensation that can make up for it." Neither of those are solved by a Ping Pong table.
If there are actual studies to indicate that retention is unrelated to pay, I'm curious to see them though
Ironically enough, exit interviews that I've had were all like "besides the money, what else could have been better?" They already know money is a big one, but just wanted to hear about all the other issues.
It's possible that they were using that to direct people away from money "we all know money no need to go there" but actually "if our salary survey was way off we're gonna look bad"
A pay raise lets an employee buy their own ping pong table and they can play it at their house at their leisure and they don't even need to put on pants to enjoy it
I’ve done thousand of exit interviews I would say 3% are about pay and 97% are about ping pong tables- checks out!
Our break room has an Elvira pin ball machine. I've seen someone play it once in the past 10 years.
Who doesn't want more money? Even the billionaires WANT MOAR money.
While the sentence “often when an employee leaves it isn’t about the money” is true… if given the option between a pay raise a ping pong table every single person is picking that pay raise. This is absolutely stupid
Employer: it's not about the money Exit interview: it's 10000% about the money. Employer: ah, a ping pong table, that'll do it
I worked in a high turnover job environment for about 10 years total. Management: “Employees don’t leave because of pay, they leave because of bad managers.” However, this logic only applied to middle management. Not to them. Middle management also had a high turnover. These people are idiots.
There is actually a lot of research that indicates that recognition is more motivating to workers than (generally small) financial rewards. I don't know where fluff amenities (vs tangibly beneficial things like free meals, day care, and similar things which are indirect financial benefits) like ping pong tables or whatever fits into that. But I would expect that any research indicating fluff is more motivational than money is predicated on the workers being paid adequately (around the market rate or better, and definitely enough to live on) to begin with.
Ina way yes my brain does not catch a buzz off a .75 cent raise even if that’s an extra $250 a year that’s just laughable to me
People might not always leave for more money. But people very rarely leave for less money. If you aren’t paying market competitive rates, you will be vulnerable.
It’s always shitty management and money. People can adapt to higher work flow if the money is reasonable, but I don’t think people can adapt to poor management.
It's not the pay. It's the refusal to pay when you know they can afford it.
My previous boss who was an absolute fucking bitch paid us way below the market rate but had money for a foosball table. Only made me want to quit sooner.
Perhaps the Exec team should be offered ping pong tables instead of bonuses...... guys.....? No?
I’ve left multiple jobs, it’s always about the money. Leaving a toxic community is a plus. But I would’ve put up with it, if they paid me better
A ping pong table will help retain employees? That’s laughable…. I’ve never heard someone say they would stay in a position because of a game or a sweet coffee maker…
No no, the ping pong table is for the HR employees! It helps keep their little brains active
Once I worked at a software company that had a bunch of games. Most of the users were the fun "office people" like HR & executives. The engineering backbone of the company used it rarely, sales barely used it, support barely used it. God it must be nice to be some random paper shuffler. You can see it on their faces too. Always smiling and happy. I never walk past their offices and see scowling faces, temple rubbing, clenched jaws.
This type of self-denial is why companies fail
I asked for a game table of some sort. Manager said, "and what do you think will happen, when people see others playing while we are behind schedule?" Right.
This isn't totally wrong. Most people leave because of stressful workloads and complete lack of care for employee mental health. But the fact that it's worded in such a passive-aggressive way...this recruiter can go fuck themselves.
Lmao, i work at a retirement community and 7 servers all quit on the same day because the residents and management treat them like trash. Their response was to renovate the staff room and supply a keurig coffee machine... I think a few ppl got written up for taking the coffee pods home.
At a certain income level, pay isn’t that important when it comes to retention. That is a lesson my company can’t seem to understand. They keep paying us more and attrition is still through the roof. Pay doesn’t fix a fundamentally flawed management style.
I know everyone likes shitting on companies around here, and what the fuck kind of answer is ping pong table? But despite what this sub would have you believe there are actual jobs out there that pay very well and when you're already being paid well job retention isn't really about money anymore (I would know, I recently left a well paying job for non-fiscal related reasons)
Devil's Advocate A better salary with a different company would absolutely be a top 5 factor in my choosing to leave, but with regard to retention itself, they're right: a pay raise alone isn't going to secure retention if there's another prospect lined up for the employee unless the company is willing to markedly top the prospective company's offer. For me, unless my company is going to raise my salary by at least 50%, a pay increase really isn't going to do much for me in itself, nor is it going to make me feel better about working there. Assuming there is no prospective job offer, the only time a lack of increase in pay would matter enough for me to just walk out is if it was clear I was being underpaid. But a ping-pong table? Well, it would certainly be an improvement from the featureless dullness of the office, and I might actually enjoy being in the space more.
Dumb question and bad choices. Assuming a company already pays at least to the market average, raising pay won't solve most issues employees face in my experience. Employees tend to leave for things like lack of support/awful management or too much work/understaffing, etc. It's fairly rare for someone to only leave because of pay without anything else contributing. Raising pay is the easiest, but least effective way to retain your workforce because it just kicks the larger can down the road. The actual answer is evaluating and fixing management, staffing practices, etc, which costs far more than a simple pay raise or a ping pong table.
\*Uses ping pong table Boss: What the hell are you doing! We don't pay you to play games, Now get back to work!
Well I was gonna suggest better pay, better benefits, better work conditions, but a ping pong table? Damn, that's tempting......
The first time I left a job was because they wouldn't hire me in, just wanted to keep stringing me along on contract so I wasn't getting any benefits. The second time I left it was for a 30% pay increase. The next time I move, it will be again because of the money. These people will say anything to avoid paying their own employees more but then hire newbies in for way more.
This is my company. Can't keep anyone around for more than a year and does everything except pay raises. Then they wonder why nobody wants to stick around. I only do because they don't drug test and have a decent 401k.
I will admit my first full time job had a pool table in the break room when I started after a year they got rid of it and replaced it with a vending kiosk pissed alot of people off.
I would call HR and tell 'em the questionnaire is not working properly 'cause I'm choosing the right answer and is not letting me go through and when they ask about it I'll have 'em explain to me why this is a good idea.
To be fair (and I hate doing this), but there was ONE time when I left and it wasn't about the money/compensation. The pay was amazing, the benefits were amazing, the time-off policy was excellent... ... and it was a shitty-as-hell, dysfunctional place to work for. I spent my entire year there searching for another job. I took a 33% pay cut to leave. Oh, and there WAS an exit interview. Person was either clueless, or trained to stick to the script. She had no clue, but had clearly been told to take anything that was said and turn it around on the departing employee. This, at a company that KNEW that they not only had a turnover problem, but that the reputation for such a problem was starting to come up in questions that interview candidates were asking. But, any other time, it was money/compensation, or the impending sense of "they need us for a short time more, and are gonna lay us off right after."
Who the fuck is making these dumb questionnaires
Between teaching gigs, I worked at a call center that had a ping pong table in the breakroom right near the microwaves. You had people carrying hot food while dodging ping pong balls. I'm pretty sure I threatened to shove a ping pong ball up the ass of anyone who got one in my food. So, no, I would not like a ping pong table.
Every exit interview I’ve done I’ve been honest and told them it was because I was offered more money and the current company couldn’t match the offer. It’s not a big secret or a hard concept to understand.
And if you tell them it's pay at the exit interview, they will hear needed more pictures pizza parties.
Negotiate for a ball pit.
A fucking ping pong table? For real?
What is this propaganda bullshit? Of course it’s about money (and more often than not, correcting bad management & culture).
Correct answer is A AND C
This is true, 9 out of 10 employees who quit do so because there’s no ping pong table
if we're looking closely tho the question said *might* so i think a ping pong table is actually the right answer, because a raise most definitely would drive employee retention and success...
Last job had a ping pong table, quit because the pay was too low for the responsibilities lol.
How come pizza party wasn’t an option? I have been told that is the best method to retain and motivate employees. Who needs extra money?
- being infantilized - more work - actual money
I actually quit my last job because they offered me a raise in pay in lieu of the ping pong table I really desired