Employers Struggle to fill Professional Ranks as Unemployment Remains High

With unemployment for May 2012 at 12.7 million as reported by the Department of Labor, conventional knowledge would dictate that businesses should easily find workers. But according to a report from Achievers, HR recruiters and CEOs are hampered by an erroneous perspective on what employees are seeking in the workplace: professional recognition and a sense of value, as stated in the report.

A second survey from Manpower found that 49 percent of companies are having difficulty recruiting talent despite the unemployment national situation. This difficulty in finding replacement workers makes losing employees an even direr prospect for companies seeking to maintain competitiveness.

The Achievers survey goes on to report that 46 percent of respondents said that feeling valued and being rewarded for their efforts are the top deciding factors when choosing an employer. The Department of Labor also reports that nearly two-thirds of American workers leave their jobs due to feeling undervalued or underappreciated. The Achievers survey revealed that just 9 percent of employees firmly believed that they receive adequate recognition while 57 percent of CEOs felt this way. The vast majority of workers (70 percent) reported being recognized only annually or not at all.

A third report, this time from talent management firm Bersin & Associates, reports that companies with highly effective recognition programs experienced over 30 percent less turnover than companies with recognition programs judged as unsatisfactory by their employees. And while Achievers found that companies spend an annual collective $46 billion on recognition programs and other rewards, they are largely unaware of what they are actually receiving in return for their investment.

JOSHUA BJERKE