Employee Satisfaction Lowest it has ever been – Conference Board Report

In a Conference Board Report released today:

http://www.conference-board.org/utilities/pressPrinterFriendly.cfm?press_ID=3820, (also see:  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34691428/ns/business-careers/)

researchers have found that employee satisfaction is at the lowest point since they began measuring this in 1987.

Employee satisfaction in 1987 was 61%.  In the most recent survey it was only 45%.

Surprisingly, the authors do NOT believe that this lowest ever employee satisfaction measure is just a function of the current American economic downturn.  In fact, they think it is a sign of something far more insidious, especially as it will impact enterprise success and knowledge transfer from one generation to the next.

As a third-party recruiter, this is interesting for two reasons.

First, as in each of the last two recessions I worked through, this employee satisfaction was important for recruiting success once hiring began again in earnest as the economy recovered.  Frankly, it made recruiting easier because so many currently employed professionals were fed up with their existing situation and were glad to at least hear about other opportunities they could investigate to find that elusive job satisfaction.  Being there to help, made recruiting very easy if you had client searches that were indeed great opportunities.

Second, maybe more importantly for those of us who have long term client relationships, and a long term view toward our profession as third party search professionals, is our need to not just to provide the recruiting solutions that we do, but to begin looking for ways to offer retention services for those we place as well as those our placements will be working with.

Employee satisfaction and retention will be key in enterprise success, and as we hear about the dissatisfaction at least as much as any other group of service providers in the market right now, we are uniquely poised to offer retention services that could significantly impact enterprise success for our clients, making them considerably more competitive.  Our clients will pay for that if we offer the professional service.

I will say it again, do you have your CERS credential (learn more at http://www.recruitinglife.com/EduCert/cers.cfm)?

But in the short term, as soon as hiring begins again in earnest, I predict we will have plenty of candidates to recruit, if recruiting is part of what you do (and I am surprise to learn almost weekly how many third party recruiters don’t actually ever recruit).  Because, as a final quote in the summary of the Conference Board Report suggests employee turnover will be very high in the next year:

In fact, 22 percent of respondents said they don’t expect to be in their current job in a year. “This data throws up a big, red flag because the increasing dissatisfaction is not just a ‘survivor syndrome’ artifact of having co-workers and neighbors laid off in the recession.”

Cultivate those client relationships, seems to me that headhunting will be very good in 2010 for third party recruiters who are taking the time to cultivate the right relationships with clients and (all the above, apparently dissatisfied and soon to be job changing) candidates alike.

Let’s go Radical Recruit!!!

As always your insightful comments, observations or criticisms welcomed and encouraged.

Jeff Skrentny, CERS, had an inauspicious start in the recruiting profession as his first placement quit after 93 days.  Then he was sued.  Despite that start, Jeff  has been an executive recruiter for 23 years, and has also been a trainer, author and motivator for his profession for the last 15 years, as well as being a business consultant and adviser for its producers, managers & owners for the last 10 years; all while still running a busy IT search business in Chicago at his firm Jefferson Group Search.