If you are an employer, surely one of your most important goals for 2008 is retain your organization’s very best performers. It turns out we have a pretty good idea what it is that those employees want from a job. According to the Society for Human Resource Management’s 2007 Job Satisfaction Report, the top five contributors to job satisfaction include the following:

Trying to determine how to offer all of the above satisfaction factors to your employees need not be as daunting as it sounds. In fact, I have anecdotal evidence that employees are smart enough to realize that trade-offs often must be made.

 

Last year, the head of one law firm HR department related the following to me: In 2007, when East coast law firms began the race to raise new associates salaries, his law firm adopted a unique approach. They formed two committees of law firm associates and asked them to develop some recommendations. The firm could raise associate salaries. If it did so, however, they would also need to raise the number of hours each associate would be expected to bill. Alternatively, the firm could keep salaries and billable hours at their then current level. It turns out the associates were smart enough to realize there is “no free lunch.” Both committees recommended that the firm not increase salaries.