February 7th, 2006 by A.J.
There’s some surprises in the Salary.com 2005/2006 Employee Satisfaction and Retention Survey between what employees value and what HR professionals perceive to be important to employee job satisfaction. Many of us are at increased risk of losing our most valuable and productive employees.
HR professionals list the top factors of employee happiness as: Adequate Benefits, Friendly Co-workers and Fair Compensation, in that order. However, dissatisfied employees cite inadequate compensation, no opportunities for advancement, and no recognition for their work as the top three reasons for leaving.
The report states that turnover costs you 30% of the replaced person’s salary, but half of dissatisfied employees say they would stay another year for as little as 15 percent more in base salary.
February 5th, 2006 by A.J.
Do you, as a project manager, add value to your project? Do you add value to your company? If you’re a PM, I’m sure the answer is a resounding “YES!” Okay, now prove it.
So you say, “My last project came in on time and under budget.” How do you know it would not have been the same without you? Or maybe even more under budget since your salary would not have been there. How do you know the project would not have been completed sooner without all those meetings? So, unless you can undertake identical projects with and without a PM, you cannot come up with quantitative financial data defining a PM’s value….after the fact.
Here’s a report on the Value of PM from the Center of Business Practices. The only comment I’d make is that the survey is based on 100 responses from PM practitioners, of which 59% were project managers. That’s like asking Congress if politics is a good thing.
If you are in a company without project management initiatives, you may want to measure your financial, productivity, customer, and process metrics for a period of time before implementing PM procedures and processes. Then you may have some comparative data. Otherwise you may only have those “touchy-feely” kind of data, such as personal testimonials, anecdotes and “I just know it’s good.”
