What should we do to boost morale and prevent further resignations? Promise a bonus if they stay for 12 months? Immediate salary increases? Expedite hiring replacements for the engineers who resigned? Invest in professional development training courses for the remaining engineers?
* AU was originally head office + manufacturing + r&d.
* Then, head office was moved to the US (where the company president is now), but manufacturing + r&d were left in Australia. I would bet money that when this happened, there was an announcement of "don't worry, this is the only change we're making, all the other jobs are safe and everything else is staying the same!"
* Now, manufacturing is moving, but everyone else has "been assured that their jobs are safe".
Can you see the pattern? The 3 that have resigned so far can.
If the president cared, their ass would be on a plane to see people in person. They wouldn't be offloading the search for solutions to you.
Good luck.
Whatever the company may have said about assurances that their jobs are safe, making people in Australia redundant, moving production to the US and hiring more people in the US sounds as if thats the direction the company is heading in and the jobs in AU will be less interesting and eventually eliminated.
Retention bonuses and salary may help, but letting them know what the AU team role will be (why is it being kept rather than moved to the US). Will they have autonomy or ownership of something or just passed overflow work from the US?
All of the things that you suggest may help, but if it turns out that they all hate US HQ or at least don't trust it and have mentally committed to jumping ship, it may be better to let them go. I've not seen good results from keeping people once they've passed that point.
Assurance that their jobs are safe is a joke. Its like when a company says that they are just one big family. Only management believe those lies and they force them on everyone else.
Are you truly being honest about keeping them on? Write up a contract that guarantees them X years of employment, at Y severance per month if terminated early.
More realistically, you should consider that the ones resigning have a better read on the situation than you do.
The reaction of those 3 employees was my own, and when the culture is so clearly against you, and the company clearly doesnt have more than fluff words (across the org) to retain you, then the net sentiment has shifted strongly away from "trust the employer" to "the employer will screw me the first chance they get".
You could try giving them 'unbreakable' contracts (pay X with X big if you end up firing them) but even then, they know that if it's only about money, they will eventually be fired.
Basically, it looks like you now have one giant trust issue.
If I were a bit cynical, I'd say it's a great way for US management to get rid of the entire Australian team without having to deal with the complexities of firing everyone at once (which might be difficult or expensive in some countries, I don't know about Australia ).
There you go, they didn't believe in that reassurance.
You want to keep the rest? Make them see your long term plan for their department.
The signal from these actions is clear - there's no stable footing in this company anymore. People are leaving because there is no telling what comes next and it is better to leave on your own terms than to get fired.
Promises are worthless because the company can break them at any time. If you're serious about any then put them in writing so the terms are clear.
What can your company do to convince people to stay? Hire more (more than 3) engineers in Australia. If they plan to keep an engineering branch in Australia. If they are planning on closing it down ... You offer specific plans to the remaining people to stay until you close. So say, we will maintain an office and your employment for 6 months after we close the place, that will give you 6 months, on the clock, to find a new job.
