Which employees? Its like the old claim that only 10% of the money spent on advertising is worth anything but nobody can figure out which 10% it is.
So the corporation knows that 99% of the employees showed up for work the day after their $10K paycheck, and the replacement for the guy who quit won't show up for less than $11K. Well, if they give no one a raise next payroll will cost 99 x 10 + 11 = $1001K, and if they give everyone a pay raise then no one will quit but payroll will cost 100 x 11 = $1100K. That's an extra $99K and that's gonna cost some HR exec her bonus.
So you can guess what strategy they pursue.
Companies also have a political/cultural/religious view that individual contributors are instantly interchangeable cogs and they have MASSIVE cognitive dissonance if you point out thats not true and the recruitment and onboarding process are staggeringly expensive, so everyone job hopping all the time would cost like 25% the total labor budget so you're paying (in the example above) $1001K but who cares whats outgoing, you're only getting at most $750K of work out of them when they're hopping vs you'd get $1100K of work out of them if they didn't hop. And you're financially in the long run far better off paying $1100K for $1100K worth of work output than paying $1001K for $750K of actual work output. But like I said that goes against their political/cultural/religious views so they'll slap hands over their ears and chant "nah nah nah" when you point it out.
You get more of what you measure, and cutting productivity by a hard to measure 25% is worth it in a corporate Dilbert sense, if it saves an easy to measure $99K.
I would argue that meritocracy in the workplace doesn't lead to happiness. Job security does however. There are still aspects of meritocracy but someone performing at 2x of their peer will be er get double the pay, and that's okay. The division that would result from that situation leads to unhappiness and therefore lower productivity. Pay tends to only double for every order of magnitude of increase in impact instead.
So the corporation knows that 99% of the employees showed up for work the day after their $10K paycheck, and the replacement for the guy who quit won't show up for less than $11K. Well, if they give no one a raise next payroll will cost 99 x 10 + 11 = $1001K, and if they give everyone a pay raise then no one will quit but payroll will cost 100 x 11 = $1100K. That's an extra $99K and that's gonna cost some HR exec her bonus.
So you can guess what strategy they pursue.
Companies also have a political/cultural/religious view that individual contributors are instantly interchangeable cogs and they have MASSIVE cognitive dissonance if you point out thats not true and the recruitment and onboarding process are staggeringly expensive, so everyone job hopping all the time would cost like 25% the total labor budget so you're paying (in the example above) $1001K but who cares whats outgoing, you're only getting at most $750K of work out of them when they're hopping vs you'd get $1100K of work out of them if they didn't hop. And you're financially in the long run far better off paying $1100K for $1100K worth of work output than paying $1001K for $750K of actual work output. But like I said that goes against their political/cultural/religious views so they'll slap hands over their ears and chant "nah nah nah" when you point it out.
You get more of what you measure, and cutting productivity by a hard to measure 25% is worth it in a corporate Dilbert sense, if it saves an easy to measure $99K.