The Labor Day weekend remains a favorite time for American workers to fire up the grill or cheer their favorite baseball team — or to polish their resumes and search the classifieds.

That reality, revealed in two new surveys by Development Dimensions International (DDI), may come as a shock to business leaders who think their companies have taken drastic steps to reduce employee turnover. Eight years of economic growth, plus changing demographics, have made the economy a job-seeker’s paradise, and the presidential candidates are vowing to keep it going full steam. But the DDI surveys shows that, despite this continuing challenge, many companies still labor under myths about the crisis in employee retention.

“Though employee turnover has plagued companies for years, many still don’t understand the real costs and problems,” said Richard S. Wellins, senior vice president of marketing for DDI, a global human resource consulting firm specializing in Web-enabled leadership development and employee recruitment. “Some companies have taken steps to stem the loss of key employees, but few companies have done all they could, mainly because they don’t yet fully understand how bad the situation is, and they don’t really understand what employees want.”

Who was surveyed?

For its “Retention Survey of HR Professionals,” DDI interviewed human resources managers and executives from major corporations chosen as “benchmark” organizations. The survey queried the HR professionals about measurement of employee turnover, why employees leave and how the organizations promoted job retention.

For its “Retention Survey of Employees,” DDI surveyed employees of major corporations chosen as “benchmark” organizations about their level of job satisfaction, about how their organization rated in various measures relevant to job satisfaction, and how the employees ranked those same criteria.

The myths

“The root of the problem is that too many businesses still believe in myths about employee turnover,” Wellins said. “Many organizations have taken some effective steps to retaining key employees, but far too many employers are ignoring valuable tools for keeping their best employees. More important, many employers are still far away from truly understanding what makes employees stay and what lures them- or drives them - into the arms of another company.”

Here are ten of the myths that do the most to hamper employee retention efforts:
Myth No. 1: The retention problem is going away
Fact: Rather than going away, job turnover is going into overdrive. The surveys show that 31 percent of employees are dissatisfied or neutral about their jobs. Also, 42 percent of the HR professionals reported higher turnover this year than last; 43 percent expect it to continue at that high level next year; and 31 percent expect turnover to increase even more.
Myth No. 2: Companies are doing everything they can to keep employees
Fact: In the survey, 98 percent of HR professionals admitted their organizations needed to do better at employee retention. In fact, only 44 percent of those HR professionals in the survey said their organizations plan to overhaul the retention strategy in the upcoming year.
Myth No. 3: Employee satisfaction equals employee retention
Fact: The DDI survey showed that less than 10 percent of the employees said they were dissatisfied with their jobs. But more than a quarter of employees, regardless of satisfaction level, plan to look for a new job within the year.
Myth No. 4: Today’s HR departments understand employees’ needs and motivations
Fact: The surveys showed a big disconnect between how HR professionals and employees viewed job retention. For example, the HR professionals ranked “finding meaning in one’s work” dead last as a reason why employees quit. But employees cited “finding meaning in one’s work” as the second most important factor in job satisfaction.
Myth No. 5: It’s all about money
Fact: When employees ranked what was most important, money finished out of the money — it was only the fifth most important value. The most important values were, in order, the ability to balance work and outside life, the meaningfulness of work, trust among employees and the employees’ relationship with their supervisor or manager.
Myth No. 6: Employees have stopped caring about organizational trust and loyalty
Fact: Ninety-nine percent of employees surveyed consider trust in the workplace to be important, but only 29 percent of those employees report a high level of trust within their current organization. Only six percent of HR professionals selected lack of trust as one of the top five reasons why employees leave, again showing the gap between HR professionals and employees.
Myth No. 7: Companies have embraced new retention tactics
Fact: The DDI survey showed that companies have adopted some new tactics, but not all. Companies have found that exit interviews, internal surveys, salary hikes or rewards and more open communications have helped fight job turnover. But more than half the organizations in the survey haven’t even tried tactics such as offering stock options, assigning coaches or mentors for employees, educating managers in retaining employees, increasing managers’ responsibility for retention or offering job sharing, rotational assignments and telecommuting.
Myth No. 8: It doesn’t cost much to hire a replacement
Fact: HR professionals estimated the average cost of replacing a manager at $30,000. This finding is similar to U.S. Department of Labor estimates that the base cost of replacing a worker is 30 percent of that person’s annual earnings. Looking more broadly at all the costs, DDI’s research estimates the cost of a poor hiring decision for a highly skilled professional or leadership position to be $107,970.
Myth No. 9: The only real problem area is in high-tech fields
Fact: The survey shows that groups such as sales professionals and customer service and support staff are exiting the revolving door more than any other professional classification. Information technology professionals are definitely in the top five problem groups, but they are not the only area for concern.
Myth No. 10: Organizations put more effort into retaining managers than they do any other group of employees
Fact: The survey showed that 41 percent of organizations that have a formal retention strategy are using it to retain employees with specialized skills, but only 27 percent use the same strategy to try to retain managers and executives. This shows exactly why there is a looming “leadership crisis” worldwide.

“These surveys confirm what we at DDI have found all over the world: 99 out of 100 organizations must adopt better strategies to fight job turnover,” Wellins said. “Organizations must first dispel the myths about job retention, then undertake a major and continuing effort using the latest assessment and retention techniques to keep the employees with the skills and leadership ability so crucial in today’s business world.”.