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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024
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Employee Retention May Need Attention

Where are your A Players going? On average, employee tenure is down to 4.6 years and shrinking. Your sales exec is probably going to change jobs within a year — the average tenure in San Diego County is now about 18 months.

Ken Schmitt, founder and CEO of TurningPoint Executive Search, has more staggering numbers:

On average, people changing jobs receive a 12 percent to 20 percent increase in base salary. For a good sales exec, expect to pay more. “Volunteer quits” now are almost twice the rate of forced departures and at their highest rates since April 2008.

As employers gain confidence in the economy, Schmitt, based in Oceanside, sees more A Players getting multiple offers. He also sees a lot more counter offers.

His advice: Take care of your best people. Yes, he’s telling you to keep your best people out of his targets. But don’t fret for Schmitt. If you don’t take care of your best people, you may be calling him to find their replacements.

• • •

Oh, how we can be a fickle bunch in the business community.

This month’s Business Forecast — sponsored by Silvergate Bank, conducted by Competitive Edge Research and distributed by the San Diego Regional and East County chambers of commerce — reveals an insignificant change in the Business Outlook Index; we continue to have a guardedly optimistic view of the local economy.

But there’s a big dip in how we view “business challenges.” Concerns over government-related issues have abated in one month from 24.9 percent to only 13 percent of chamber member respondents saying government is a challenge to overcome. Likewise, concerns over minimum wage laws fell from 6.6 percent to 2.7 percent.

Things are that much better just by kicking one issue down the road to 2016? We’re still in California, right?

• • •

Qualcomm Inc.’s $500,000 investment for scholarships at two universities in China (see page 26) speaks to their increasingly complex relationships in Asia and at home. Paul Jacobs some 18 months ago was among high-tech executives seeking federal legislation to reform the high-skilled immigration system. Qualcomm won’t disclose the number of high-end jobs that go unfilled; it is rumored to be in the thousands. They need talent.

Qualcomm is under pressure from the Chinese government to revise its business tactics, it is not getting paid licensing revenue on more than 200 million handsets sold there in the past year and it continues to court the world’s largest mobile carrier China Mobile Ltd., which does not use Qualcomm’s technology. They need goodwill.

The Qualcomm-China dynamic is one of the most important stories to follow in these parts.

Editor in Chief Nels Jensen can be reached via njensen@sdbj.com or 858-277-6897.

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