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Read an interesting blurb in Business Week – no link because I can’t find one. Whatever BW. The article is: Are Your Employees Just Biding Their Time?

The first point is that people aren’t quitting their jobs. So that’s good – we haven’t completely lost our minds. People see 17+% total unemployment and think to themselves – “self, I am going to continue to lick my bosses boots until the sun starts shining again.”

Next point the author, Peter Coy makes is that companies shouldn’t expect this trend to continue. Some day we might get under 10% again. Hello, Europe. And when we do, people are going to leave in numbers. This makes sense to me in a way that he doesn’t speak to in the article.

There is a big contradiction taking place right now. Unemployment is the highest its been since the 80s. Yet, the stock market is back over 10,000 and doing well for itself. Why? Companies are showing good numbers. They are showing good numbers because they drastically reduced cost. That is you, btw – YOU are the cost. Now…the survivors are doing the work of 3 and 4 people. Which is good for companies because they aren’t selling anything anyway.

But someday this will change and people are going to give their bosses the collective finger and move on. So says Coy.

He closes with something I’ve been railing against for years (at least a decade, probably more). People quit jobs because of the money! They do not quit because of their boss. They will eat whatever their boss dishes out, because they need to pay rent, eat and play Xbox.

Coy captures a great point at the end – that managers don’t get it. Managers think that the soft stuff is what is important. “management climate” and “supervisor relationship”. Hey…no one cares if you moved their cheese. They care about the cheddar in their bank account.

I’ve managed a LOT of people in my time. They care about cash and benefits. Stop drinking the kool-aid. Put the stupid balloons away – you know who you are – take all the money you spend on stupid crap that you think MOTIVATES your people and give that money to them.

If you want to give them fun things give them Red Bull and Snickers bars. Crank them up and then watch their production SOAR.