Mike Richards cites a Treasury Salaries Survey of 1,700 people showing compensation ranks fourth in why employees quit. The top three reasons are lack of career progression, poor leadership, and insufficient recognition. Senior treasurers often assume higher pay fixes retention, but candidates reject roles with better pay if team culture is poor.
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Do you know salary isn't why people leave jobs? It's usually because of you. Over 1,700 people do our Treasury Salaries Survey now. It's incredible. Most people come to it and say— I think they come with the same thing— am I being underpaid? So okay, fine, we benchmark their salaries. But when we actually then look at the data, the reason people are leaving jobs isn't because of salary. It's not the reason why people are unhappy. They're usually unhappy because of lack of progression for them, maybe poor leadership, and what they're doing isn't being recognized. So actually, that's why they get frustrated. And as we've seen in our salary survey, salary is fourth, and that's why they're unhappy. I mean, I remember sitting with a group of the largest treasurers in in the US, and they said to me, so we just need to pay our teams more money and that will cure all our problems, so they'll all be happy, right? And I was like, uh, no. What? I said, you need to sit down with them, sit down with your team, have a proper conversation. Okay, so what do we ask them? Said, sit with them, say, how are we progressing your career? How are we helping you? 'Are you fulfilled? Should we give you study support? Are you being recognized? What do you actually want next, the next step for you?' If you do those things right, as I said to them, you won't need me. And in actual fact, I was doing myself out of a job, saying people will stay, they will, because they want to do a good job, they enjoy doing a good job in Treasury. It's when you don't recognize what they're doing, that's when they get frustrated and they leave. One of the other things I've noticed when I've been doing some recruitment recently is that actually a couple of roles I've been going to people with, they say, actually, I'm not interested. I'm so— oh no, but the salary is a step up. Yeah, yeah, but I've actually heard the culture is wrong there. Oh wow, okay. But so people aren't just chasing a salary step up, they're actually able to hear what you're like as a team. The key thing is salary, yes, it does matter, but it's not the reason people stay or leave, it's you. So fix that. Have a sit-down coffee with your team. Say, look, are we looking after you? And then you're going to make a lot of your problems go away. Thanks. That's it. And check out the other video as well, which talks about how to get your decent pay rise. Thanks.
