In the May/June edition of Consulting magazine, we asked staff retention expert Dick Finnegan why firm leaders don't simply ask consultants: "What can I offer you to make you want to stay here longer?"
Based on decades of experience helping to reduce attrition rates, he said the most common answer is: "We fear they will ask for more money."
The answer speaks volumes about leaders' superficial understanding of what truly motivates their consultants. By digging beneath the surface we found that money may be the easy answer for why someone says they'd be willing to defect, but it's hardly the true reason behind the passion consultants have for their work, their clients and their firms. Nor is compensation the key motivator for what is most likely to lure a consultant away to another employer.
Based on the initial findings of Consulting 's annual employee satisfaction survey (which, as of press time, had garnered detailed feedback from more than 8,500 consultants), money is only an issue for those already unsatisfied with their firm—not the other way around. More specifically, the majority (58 percent) say their next career move will take them into general industry. In contrast, only about one-quarter (26 percent) say they plan to work for another consulting firm next. Are they chasing higher paychecks? Not even close.
Most consultants said they think they make more money now then they would in a similar position in industry. Just under one in five say their base salary would be higher for a equivalent position in industry and less than one in three believe they'd earn a higher annual performance bonus if they left the profession. And yet, by more than a two-to-one margin, consultant says their next career move will take them away from what they perceive as the higher-paying consulting profession and into industry.
This isn't lost on consultants. When we asked what an employer in general industry could offer to lure them away from their current consulting firm, "work/life balance" is a more important inducement than "more money."
In fact, money was a key motivator for less than one in five (about 19 percent) consultants considering a jump into industry.
"More money" is the single biggest enticement (though still only accounting for about 22 percent of respondents) another consultancy could offer to lure a consultant away from their current firm. However, based on the correlation between consultants' anticipated attrition (how long they say they plan to stay at their current firm) and each of 18 different aspects of employee satisfaction analyzed by Consulting, cash isn't king.
We found dissatisfaction levels are so high in other areas (work/life balance, career development, client engagement satisfaction, etc.) that what we suspect consultants are really saying is, "If I have to continue working for a consulting firm, they're going to have to pay me a lot more to make it worth my while."
Paying someone enough to encourage them not to leave is a poor investment. Consulting requires a willingness to invest significant spare energy and time. And you can't extract that from an employee motivated only by their paycheck.
Consulting firm leaders need not "fear" asking their consultants what motivates and frustrates their employees. We've asked those questions to thousands of consultants for more than a decade, including more than 25,000 since 2009. And, in short, the answer isn't scary.
According to Finnegan, founder of C-Suite Analytics, the worst things firm leaders can do is to not ask and assume that "no news is good news … until they quit."
—Jess Scheer
© Arc, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to TMSalesOperations@arc-network.com. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.