Comment by gnz11
3 days ago
Perhaps US companies should invest more in their employees then? Advancement, promotions beyond %1-3% COLAs, career paths, etc would go along way to keep employees interested in seeing their employers succeed instead of jumping ship every couple of years. The would require some effort from the C-suite however and since they jump ship every few years as well, I don't see that changing anytime soon.
Unfortunately the Wall Street accountants who run our companies don't mind if you jump ship after your 2% 'reward' raise. Because when someone new comes and costs 10 % more plus recruiting costs, that latter person has 'proven' their worth in the market, similar to when a house goes up in value due to scarcity.
If you were to explain the costs of knowledge lost, of training, of taking a risk on a new unknown person, of relationships, there's no answer because it doesn't show up in any operating expense worksheet.
What you're supposed to do is find another job, and explain that you love this job so much, but the other offer is really good, can they come up close to it and you'll stay. Repeat this every few years or find a new job and move to it.
Invest in employees is very broad statement.
Before investing to employees I think it should revisit management practices and strategies, which starts in MBA and university.
Instead of teaching how to increase shareholder value in the short term, it should also teach how to increase value to the society in the long term as well (and focus on it highly) - not just say: if you win society wins kind of generic fluff.
Without changing management strategies everything becomes short term after a while
> teaching how to increase shareholder value in the short term
Problem is this is quite often a requirement for a public company, to maximize company value/profits above all else.
Also execs who are more right-wing are typically not interested in helping the larger society in general.
This is BS. A shareholder lawsuit against the CEO/board/executives for investing in the employees in the hope of long term profits would never succeed. The idea of a fiduciary duty doesn't mean that. It means the CEO can't take actions that intentionally hurt the company.
And there are very few large public companies with active enough investors to oust a CEO over this, and even fewer that have both active and activist investors that would be interested in such a thing.
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