There are two answers to this question. The short question is “it depends”. More money might not be the greatest motivator for a 45-something, kids-in-college, happy familyman but even a 15% upside might be a great deal for 23-something…but even that might be a sweeping statement with its own limitations and real-life exceptions. For the long answer, read on…
This has to be one of the most heavily researched and anecdotally supported topic of all times. Thousands of trees have been felled printing tons of books and research reports on this topic, and even then….we are no more wiser than we were a few years back. I see two fundamental problems:
(a) Disregard for general population that we are dealing with
For example, the ‘general’ reasons for 22-25 year old leaving jobs in Bangalore would be totally different from the reasons why 40-45 year old leave jobs in San Jose (it could be ‘similar’ at times, but never the ‘same’). So, when a research says money is # so-and-so-reason, I think we need to adequately qualify the data by including what industry, locale, population, age, experience profile, organization role, etc. does the sample belong to, or at least stratify the data appropriately. In the absence of such data, I guess any data is equally good and also equally misleading (because due to the fantastic human-only ability of ‘selective response’, we are likely to pick up only what appeals to me and disregard the rest, thereby wondering why these guys leave for so-and-so reasons ?). I am not asking to stereotype people here (because that would completely negate my second point below), but pointing out that in the absence of circumstantial supporting data, the data findings could mean anything. So, the first step is to qualify i before using it as a basis to understand why people leave, and more importantly, what can we do about it.
(b) Outright disregard for the ‘Individual’
Let me make a bold and controversial statement - by far, the biggest damage to retaining people has been done by the reports that list out reasons for attrition ! Most of these reports pigeon-hole human attitudes and behavior and sort of lay-down a soft-expectation that rest of the people should be toeing that line, and that non-conformist behavior is unprofessional (just because I don’t understand some behavior and it not inline with the rest of industry workforce, it becomes very easy for me to describe that as unprofessional, especially when I am in position of power). I think most of us would be better-off keeping those write-only glossy reports safe, out of reach, and instead focus on connecting with our teams, one on one, and then making any assessments about reasons or potential reasons why someone leaves MY organization or MY team, etc. I might sound little opinionated here, but if you want to get the best results, you don’t want to take some research data why people leave in Melbourne, Shenzhen or Bangalore. You want to know what ails my team and what will fix it. Everything else is of limited academic value with its serious limitations when it comes to real-world application.
[In response to a question on LinkedIn]
