Advice For Upper Cumberland Employers with Disinterested Employees

According to Gallup Polls, about 25 percent of United States workers say they are either doing the bare minimum and “quiet quitting” their jobs, or actively disengaged and “loud quitting”.

Tennessee Tech’s Center of Career Development Director Russ Coughenour said he had encountered situations where employers are in a revolving door of hiring.

“I had an employer tell me how many job openings he had and I couldn’t believe it,” Coughenour said.”And I said, Well my god what do you look for in employees. And he said Russ, right now I’d just like to have somebody show up on Tuesday after starting on Monday.”

Coughenour said in situations where an employer finds themselves in a revolving door of workers, they may need to look at their hiring, mentoring, and advancement program.

Coughenour said employers have to be 100 percent clear on the job that you expect from your employees.

“One of the complaints we get here at the University from out undergraduates is they go out and the job is nothing like what was advertised to them,” Coughenour. “In other words they don’t feel there was transparency with exactly what they were getting into.”

Coughenour said when an employee starts a job off and the work culture, paths, duties, goals and objectives of the job are not as they were told, they feel betrayed.

“Employers have to do a super job in being transparent about the warts and all of the position,” Coughenour. “And don’t oversell just the benefits and the best parts of the job.”

Coughenour said establishing a mentor system with a fellow employee who is not the employee’s supervisor has shown to improve retention.