How Do Benefits Factor Into Retention?

Dear Big Picture:

You can follow this data path to the very best possible answer. Each year, Fortune magazine names the top 100 companies to work for and fills page after page with the great benefits they offer. Google has been No. 1 six times in 16 years and has been cited for offering horseshoe pits and free eyebrow shaping. We also know that publicly traded companies that make that list have shareholder returns that are 366 percent higher than their counterparts. 

So is the free eyebrow-shaping benefit the reason for such high profits? Hardly. A deeper dive reveals that two-thirds of the scores are based on the Great Place to Work’s Trust Index Survey, which measures how much each employee trusts a direct supervisor.

So what are the factors that drive engagement, retention and profits? It’s a simple, if not sexy, reason: an organization’s employees trust their bosses.

SOURCE: Dick Finnegan, C-Suite Analytics, Longwood, Florida, April 2015.