How to Manage Employee Turnover
Your company’s ability to retain its brightest and most experienced staff keeps everything running smoothly day after day. Is turnover an inevitable part of the cost of doing business? Too often turnover decisions are the result of having poor supervisors. Managers and organizational leaders may see a worker moving and conclude it’s for more money, but that is rarely the main reason why people leave jobs.
The first step in finding solutions is to understand the problems:
Are you spending too much money on overtime, a sign you may be overworking employees?
Are recruitment advertising costs increasing significantly?
Do employees feel their pay is less than the industry norm?
Are supervisors doing lower-level workers’ tasks?
Are supervisors covering others’ shifts when vacancies occur?
Do you find yourself cutting back on activities or organizational plans because you’re short-staffed?
Are you leaning on temp agencies?
Do you have high daily absenteeism?
Do employees seem to not be fully engaged in their work?
Are you beginning to feel like a training ground for your competitors?
How can you manage turnover? Make it an ongoing priority by establishing a retention plan. For better staff retention, you need to regularly analyze employee half-life, new employee first-year retention, short-term turnover, and hard and soft costs of employee separation and replacement.
The qualifications required for a job are becoming increasingly complex, while at the same time, the half-life of these qualifications is becoming increasingly shorter. Achieving flexibility in functioning seems to be the key to staying in the race. So if your organization is lacking in offering professionals up-to-date knowledge or skills to maintain effective performance in work roles, those professionals will go elsewhere to companies that proffer ways of helping employees stay current.
Think About Solutions
You may feel you’re in a predicament — the revolving door seems to be turning ever faster, and your company is struggling to find a solution. You want to keep employees long after they’re hired in order to maintain high levels of productivity, so what other ideas can help?
Revamp your onboarding to improve employee retention. When new hires connect with your firm, help them correlate work and organizational values, and this will boost longevity.
You want to avoid this statistic: According to one study, one-third of new hires quit the job after about six months. You should outline milestones for new hires to accomplish. In this way, you avoid employees who feel underchallenged or overwhelmed. Don’t create unnecessarily heavy burdens for employees or your recruiters.
Make sure your employees are well-versed in company policies and procedures so new hires don’t leave for avoidable reasons.
Remote workers are 50 percent less likely to quit. Telecommuters are typically more satisfied with their jobs — they’re able to work at their own pace in an environment they’re comfortable with. It makes sense to allow for remote work options as a way to retain employees.
Employees anticipate a raise every year — so if you create a connection between employees’ roles and their overall value to the company, you’ll be less burdened by this expectation.
Don’t fall prey to having anyone in your company feel undervalued. Offer reassurance that employees are needed and important to the firm.
An increasing number of employees stay at a company no longer than three years. Should you make this statistic a part of your hiring plan? Not if you can get at the root cause —stop job-hopping from happening in the first place.
Remember, if employees feel they have more options and can easily move, they’ll do it. So evaluate pay, work environment and vacation policies. Be especially sensitive to Gen Yers — they saw their parents lose pensions and jobs during the recession, tingeing their loyalty with suspicion. Your attention to job satisfaction is key.