Damn - Short Timed Again

I get burned occasionally with what I'll call short timing.

A new employee will take a permanent position, adsorb the training, pay, and benefits and then move on to something else he already had in the works when he took the job.
This usually takes place within the first few months of employment.

We're pretty competitive on pay and benefits. This guy was hired in plant maintenance and made $23/hr.
We pay 95% of his health ins plus one other. The plus one other is usually a spouse or child.

He put in his notice on the day after his wife got out of the hospital with delivering a child.

In a few months in maintenance you can learn a lot here.

All wasted money in our books.

He went to take on a caretaker job at a retreat center.
The last guy who short timed us went on to join his brother in a business as soon as it got off the ground.
Others have used their new position here to bargain for a better offer from whoever else they were interviewing with.

I would also look at the "social environment" of your shop. Think about this: you say you offer good pay and great benefits (95% of medical is awesome btw...) why would they leave this for a job that most often has worse benefits? Might be more to it than just them "taking your training" and running. Something to consider.

--
Bill

You say you're competitive in pay and benefits, but the other guys must be even more competitive. That is, unless there's something about the job that drives them to one with lower pay and bennies. I hope that is not the case. In other words, if you pay enough, good folks will stick around. That's how capitalism works.

The OP hasn't invoked the phrase "Exit Interview", so while he speaks as if his shop is a truly professional situation, why doesn't anyone want to sit down and ask the departing employee WHY they are leaving?

Maybe the shop does conduct an exit interview, but it's not obvious in the first post. Was there a questionaire the departing worker was encouraged (or perhaps rewarded) to complete?

There are some defensive (and perhaps evil) things you can do, such as refuse to confirm a past employee's work history. There are third-party companies that (for a fee, paid by the inquiring entity) will disclose past relationship with your company. Otherwise, your company refuses to acknowledge anything, the curious will need to pay a third-party.

I think it's completely evil, basically refusing to admit to them ever working there, unless the curious party pays for the information.

But it's becoming a very common behavior.

Oh, and don't give a printed pay stub, put it on the Internet. Another evil thing, in my opinion. Seems like employers are doing their damnedest to avoid giving an employee any way to prove they worked at a company.

few months in maintenance you can learn a lot here

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Most people hate that, every day, some new crisis. You need to figure out a better psychological profile of an ideal candidate, and devise a way to identify them. I know the medical field has this long drawn-out questionnaire about that keeps asking about multi-tasking, not multi-tasking, preferring to work on only one thing at a time, etc. Perhaps the OP's company needs to use such a questionnaire.

You are in business, and you hire people that are essentially in business for themselves. They do what is best for their business (financially and mentally).

Your pay sounds decent, your benefits sound fantastic. Keep losing people from the same position. I don't think its the people you are hiring, its something internal
to your company.

A caretaker at a retreat, sounds like the Shining, sounds like a shitty job.

I'd say your people aren't happy. you could be a giant miserable prick to work for. I'm guessing not since people that don't give a crap don't post on a board like this, you're here
because you give a s**t.

First sentence after your original post, "social environment". You've got a poisoned piece of shit out there on your floor. I don't care how much he/she knows, how productive he/she is, gotta go. buh bye.

If you sit back for 30 seconds, I'll bet you a 6 pack, you know exactly who it is.

When I left my former life(pre metal working), part of the reason was I wasn't happy, I loved my boss, 90% of my co workers were awesome. 1 fucking co-worker, who was my supervisor 3 out of 5 days, we had the same job, she just had the seniority(in the end I made more than she did haha). In the end I didn't give a shit, if this opportunity didn't come around, I wouldn't have stayed, awesome boss or not, $12 bucks a week for the top of the line BCBS, Vision, Dental, Disability. 4 weeks vaca, 8 sick days, 4 personal days, and a 40 hour bonus check on my anniversary, and it was 2 miles from where I lived, I could set my alarm for 7 minutes from when I had to be at work, and never be late.

When I left I was only 3 months into my year, i had eaten up all my sick days and almost all of my vaca. Before I hopped in my covered wagon and went west, I came back as a
sub contractor and trained my replacement, 3 months later, he was ready to quit, not because of the boss, not because of 90% of the workers, it was that one little bit
of poison that made his life a miserable hell. The boss finally nipped that shit in the bud, YOU ARE FIRED. real simple. It was actually write up, write up, 2 day suspension, week suspension, FIRED. He actually called me up and apologized, it was actually e-mail, but he did say he was sorry.

Get rid of your real problem and the problem you are asking about will go away.

It works both ways, how many people have you hired that have been trained and learned a skill at somebody else's expense, then come to work at your company? I bet you don't turn them away.

I worked at one place, and a few days after I started I asked about Catia training, all hell broke loss, and I was thrown out of the managers office. Come to find out, a friend of mine had worked there 6 months previously, had the full Catia NC training package, including being sent back east for 2 weeks of training at another division. As soon as he was trained and very profocient he quite for a much better paid job. After that there was a company wide ban on any training. I bumped into him at lunch and told him he had f***** it up for the rest of us there, he apologised and bought me lunch, so I didn't feel to bad.

Bobw said:

First sentence after your original post, "social environment". You've got a poisoned piece of shit out there on your floor. I don't care how much he/she knows, how productive he/she is, gotta go. buh bye.

If you sit back for 30 seconds, I'll bet you a 6 pack, you know exactly who it is.

Get rid of your real problem and the problem you are asking about will go away.

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+1
Anything is better than this.

I wouldn't make too many assumptions about jimfnd's shop being a crappy place to work. He mentioned 2 specific instances and hinted at others. Not exactly enough info to assume it's an overwhelming exodus. Stuff happens. People get other opportunities. We'd have to know the shop size and attrition rate to know if what he's seeing is abnormal and indicative of a hostile work environment.

Well, at least it doesn't sound like he stole $10,000 worth of stuff on his way out...

jimfnd said:

I get burned occasionally with what I'll call short timing.

A new employee will take a permanent position, adsorb the training, pay, and benefits and then move on to something else he already had in the works when he took the job.
This usually takes place within the first few months of employment.

We're pretty competitive on pay and benefits. This guy was hired in plant maintenance and made $23/hr.
We pay 95% of his health ins plus one other. The plus one other is usually a spouse or child.

He put in his notice on the day after his wife got out of the hospital with delivering a child.

In a few months in maintenance you can learn a lot here.

All wasted money in our books.

He went to take on a caretaker job at a retreat center.
The last guy who short timed us went on to join his brother in a business as soon as it got off the ground.
Others have used their new position here to bargain for a better offer from whoever else they were interviewing with.

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Short timed?... nonsense unless he didnt work the hours you paid him for...

This guy was hired in plant maintenance and made $23/hr

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YOU paid him for his work.... no one pays for loyalty, unless you think that's part of the employment contract....is that in writing somewhere?? Lets say your company falls on hard times some day,,, are you going t keep people just because??

He works, he fixed/maintained your broken stuff, you paid him. That all you paid for.

Put the ad in the paper for a new guy... good luck.

I dont think anyone considers "maintenance man" a career... it's just a job...

I for one hope the days of workers able to quit the job, walk down the street and get another one at higher wages or just a better job return to the USA .... HELP WANTED signs in every window...THAT's a good sign.

In regard to our shop "social dynamics" it is a long established company with 35 or so employees on the floor.
A third to half have 10 years or more in service. Its not unheard of to have people leave and later ask for their jobs back.

We go out of our way to be more than competitive in pay and benefits and fair in attitude, but we still get shit on occasionally.

I think we are getting pinched by two uniquely American attitudes;
1) The grass is always greener somewhere else.
2) It always ok to screw your employer.

Loyalty is a two way street.

Its a numbers game. You will always have a certain amount of this kind of attrition. Guy is hit by bus. Guy inherits a million dollars. Guy is a psycho and you didn't know. Guy's parole got revoked. Guy gets married to girl who wants to live in Florida.

Just be glad he didn't steal anything or write some crazy emails before he left.

One thing to remember- North Dakota has the lowest unemployment rate in the country, its officially something like 2.9%.
So conditions there, in terms of finding a job, are completely different from what most of us are seeing.
Where I live, "official" unemployment is 4 times that, and if you look at jobs that pay 23 bucks an hour, demand is so far beyond supply that you get 400 to 1000 applicants for any job advertised that would be like this.

So, in most of the country, a job like this would be something nobody in their right mind would walk away from, but in North Dakota, where they essentially dont have a recession like we still do here, the mindset of an employee is going to be different. Very different, if 23 dollar an hour jobs are something you can afford to drop for nicer working conditions.

I want to reiterate that these ass clowns are the outliers, we have a good to great working relationship with 95% of the people who walk through the door.

You hire enough people over the years and you can see everything.
We had one fool who compulsively stole everything he could lay his hands on, even took all the band-aids in the first aid box home.

Its the 5% who make you wonder WTF?

triumph406 said:

... he apologised and bought me lunch, so I didn't feel to bad.

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The price of lunch is quite small compared to what he stole from your employer.

There's no chains on the shop doors, you just expect people to act honestly.

jimfnd said:

The price of lunch is quite small compared to what he stole from your employer.

There's no chains on the shop doors, you just expect people to act honestly.

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You honestly believe the employee who left stole the CATIA training?

Was there a contract to stay for 1 year after training or employee must reimburse company? Is there any incentive like you will get a promotion or more $$$ after training is complete so your employee is not temped to leave? If answers to these questions is 'no', then the employee did not steal shit.

Capitalism is a bitch. It works both ways.

If a company decides to quit training anyone just because 1 guy didn't pay off, doesn't say much good for that company and their desire to keep going forward, mostly if they're just too dumb to properly write up the conditions of the training, asking for 1yr is fair enough.

Loyalty does go both ways, but seeing as how companies have usually done things its no surprise they're getting less and less of it. Everyone for himself.

Without regard to the specifics of the OP's situation, what he's describing is a big problem, especially for small businesses. Time is incredibly valuable, and you usually hire when you're busy. The costs short term are high, depending on the benefit structure, and it's shit like this why business owners will be leery about hiring.

People who we hire stay on long term overall, but we have been burned a couple times by people learning from us, and then taking a job with required experience. Training is a time where an employee is hardly productive and those doing the training are less productive. It's an investment, and sometimes a bad one.

There's no obligation for anyone to stay anywhere in this country if they don't want to. As a
business owner you just have to b careful about who you hire. Doesn't always work out.

Start giving benefits only after 90 days. Many of the big companies do that, it weeds out the people that are just getting a job to score medical benefits.

As far as specific training as someone mentioned the Catia class, make them pay out of pocket and then they get reimbursed, state they will be reimbursed 90 days after completing the training, that way you at least get something out of them.

By not offering training to anyone cause of one person you got burned by, is just stupid. You are limiting your companies abilities, and will probably have to pay more for an employee that has already had the training.


Did you ask why he left? Maybe he needed a night job, so he could take care of the new born during the day.

I always thought 90 days until benefit's was standard everywhere.