The Truth About Losing Employees (It Isn’t Pretty)

Employee turnover is expensive, and it’s not an easy fix. But, with insight, information and data you can figure it out and avoid employee turnover, thereby aiding retention.

When you lose an employee, you get lower rates of productivity. During the hiring and training processes, you cut into your profits as the hiring and education phases take longer and longer to stabilize.

If you lose an employee, your business has to go down an arduous path that creates fewer chances of success and many more frustrations during this period.

Other losses include:

• Loss in productivity while new employee learns the ropes
• Cost of training new employee
• Disengagement in other employees/other cultural impacts
• Loss of company-oriented wisdom the employee had (institutional knowledge)
• Customer service issues (including problem solving obstacles)

Therefore, businesses must create retention and decrease turnover.

THE REAL MONEY PIT

Turnover is expensive, no matter what type of position an employee holds. Estimates on the true cost of losing employees vary based on multiple factors, but recent research has found that the cost of replacing highly-trained employees and executives can easily surpass double their annual salary.

Although that may seem like a massive cost, the true cost is likely even higher. It costs months of an employee’s salary to replace them. It gets more expensive the higher up they are in the corporate ladder.

A paper from the Center for American Progress, citing 11 research papers published over a 15-year period, determined that the average economic cost of turning over a highly skilled job is 213% of the cost of one year’s compensation for that role, according to the Huffington Post.

Yikes!

That’s one grim graph.

How can this be? All this money to hire a new employee! Where does all the money go?! Quantitative impact!

The money gets siphoned into these four tanks:

• Hiring
• Onboarding and training
• Learning and development, coupled with errors new employees make
• Cost of time with an unfilled role

The top reasons for employee turnover are poor onboarding experiences, a lack of clarity surrounding job duties and expectations and/or a less than stellar boss.

HOW TO AVOID THE GRIM GRAPH’S PATH

Businesses must create retention and decrease turnover. The ability to retain employees is not a matter of mere chance. Workers will seek other employment opportunities if the business isn’t operating properly.

So, day one must set the tone for the employee’s tenure at the company:

• Onboarding and orientation
• Employee compensation
• Recognition and rewards systems, including gifts, like a customized Sunset Hill Stoneware mug
• Work-life balance
• Training and development
• Dealing with change
• Fostering teamwork
• Team celebration

These strategies target employee engagement, which increases morale and give employees a sense of pride in what they do.

In other words, people want to be part of something great; they want to belong to something and work alongside like-minded individuals whom they like, trust and respect. It is incumbent upon the manager to set the conditions that allow for such successes to occur. Teams that function optimally have trust, a shared purpose and a clear identity, just to name a few.

What is the effect of a functioning team?

Teams like these help employees want to show up — and stay — because they already understand what drives them!

Team function and conversations are key.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

An anecdote quoted from Mike Massimino’s memoir entitled SPACEMAN:

Space is a daunting place. It can be terrifying, actually, and you need to know you’re not alone up there. You need to know that every last NASA employee stands behind you. They also need to meet you so they can put a face to a name and know who they’re protecting up there… Just months after joining NASA, I suffered what was then and may still be the most difficult ordeal I’ve ever gone through. It taught me an awful lot about my new job in a very short period of time. It was an experience that had absolutely nothing to do with space and everything to do with being an astronaut.

FINAL THOUGHTS

In a world where people are an organization’s most essential assets, companies need to be more strategic about how they think about employee retention to remain competitive.

Retention strategies are important because they help create a positive work environment and strengthen an employee’s commitment to the organization. In order to do that we must want our employees to realize their full potential and know they’re valuable to us.

If not, a business’s production will be slowed, errors will be made and money will be lost.

Retaining employees provides many benefits to businesses, including but not limited to:

• Aiding in meeting business goals
• Improving production continuity
• Increasing profits
• Proper allocations of resources
• Limiting recruitment and training costs.

It’ll save you a ton of money and help you stay competitive in your industry.

Once the basic need of sufficient income and job security has been met, create an environment that enables growth, impact, and care.

However, care and appreciation doesn’t mean shouting out constant, hollow praise. Rather, care and appreciation mean generating an environment where people feel like their coworkers and their employers have their best interests in mind. And, knowing that what they’re working on is contributing to a mission that matters. Thus, a profitable company with low employee turnover! And never forget that gratitude, and a little reward, goes a long way.

This shows you recognize them and that you appreciate them. It encourages them to continue on through the long days with grit and gusto!

Wait!

It seems so easy. How can it be?