Have you ever seen...
Brain Drain?
An organization has been losing its best staff members. The
individuals who departed cited higher pay as the primary reason that
they chose to take a new job.
In order to raise the level of pay, managers exhort staff to take on
more work. That is, they admit more clients or accept more
assignments without a corresponding increase in the number of staff.
Thus, income rises. This increased funding is targeted to higher
salaries, but the raises cannot be implemented until the next fiscal
year (or, the amount of increases actually available for salaries is
smaller than hoped after other increased census/tasking/overhead costs
are considered).
Soon, staff are overheard to complain about the workload. Absences
from work due to illness increase. The remaining staff members
assume even more work. Before long, customers are complaining
about poor service which they attribute to insufficient staffing.
Most often, these complaints and anger are directed to management
because it is apparent that the front line staff have little control
over the situation.
The result is a decrease in demand for the organization’s products.
This is a sequence of events which has been repeated by many industries,
profit and not-for-profit alike.
1. Where
did they go wrong?
2. What
method of intervention would you utilize at each stage of the decline?
3. How
would you treat a non-profit in this situation differently than a
for-profit?