Perverse incentives are borne from cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all rules thought up in rush for a due-dated result requested by a manager who's in a rush for a due-dated result (continue as per stack of turtles).
> Reward seniority and loyalty
Aware this isn't a whitepaper that deeply explores what's better and worse for a company's workforce retention, but "Reward seniority and loyalty" is dangerously simplistic.
From my limited experience with payroll systems, and having groups of employees doing the same role, all on different rates based on how long they've worked for us, is a maintenance nightmare due to the inability to automate things. Salary bands and levels etc. alleviate this, but there are necessarily fairly tight limits where a 10-year veteran's expectations are just unrealistic. There's a point where "everyone doing this role" should be paid more, rather than this individual should get a higher percentage than their peers if their total remuneration would breach some ad-hoc level of acceptability.
I think a simple description of a wickedly-complex strategy is "know your people". This requires managers that have the time and space to get to know their reports, all the way up the chain.
Just two days ago I was discussing an ex-colleague, who had a bad reputation with our previous management (I was actually explicitly told by management not to bring him into my project). He eventually moved to a new company, and is an absolute star worker there. If he was managed better at the previous place he could have been a star there as well.
Immediate thought-analogy: If Managers treated their reports as Customers; if Managers acted as Sales Reps for the company in their dealings with reports, then retention would be less of a problem (also need to know which "Customers" are worth the effort).
But it all depends on what you're optimising for, and every workplace is different. Know which roles are "soldier out, soldier in", and which require 6 months of knowledge absorption to become remotely productive.
A single rule is as efficient as it gets, but it'll rub a majority of the people the wrong way. A rule for every individual will keep everyone somewhat more happy, but it'll be murder on administrative maintenance. Find your balance point on that scale and re-evaluate based on changing macro-economic situations.
> Reward seniority and loyalty
Aware this isn't a whitepaper that deeply explores what's better and worse for a company's workforce retention, but "Reward seniority and loyalty" is dangerously simplistic.
From my limited experience with payroll systems, and having groups of employees doing the same role, all on different rates based on how long they've worked for us, is a maintenance nightmare due to the inability to automate things. Salary bands and levels etc. alleviate this, but there are necessarily fairly tight limits where a 10-year veteran's expectations are just unrealistic. There's a point where "everyone doing this role" should be paid more, rather than this individual should get a higher percentage than their peers if their total remuneration would breach some ad-hoc level of acceptability.
I think a simple description of a wickedly-complex strategy is "know your people". This requires managers that have the time and space to get to know their reports, all the way up the chain.
Just two days ago I was discussing an ex-colleague, who had a bad reputation with our previous management (I was actually explicitly told by management not to bring him into my project). He eventually moved to a new company, and is an absolute star worker there. If he was managed better at the previous place he could have been a star there as well.
Immediate thought-analogy: If Managers treated their reports as Customers; if Managers acted as Sales Reps for the company in their dealings with reports, then retention would be less of a problem (also need to know which "Customers" are worth the effort).
But it all depends on what you're optimising for, and every workplace is different. Know which roles are "soldier out, soldier in", and which require 6 months of knowledge absorption to become remotely productive.
A single rule is as efficient as it gets, but it'll rub a majority of the people the wrong way. A rule for every individual will keep everyone somewhat more happy, but it'll be murder on administrative maintenance. Find your balance point on that scale and re-evaluate based on changing macro-economic situations.