How to cut down on employees leaving
Employee churn is a fact of life.
Also called turnover, churn is the loss of employees over time.
In the UK, over one third of employees leave their company each year.
And there are different kinds of churn.
Some, you will be happy to accept as a manager. Others, you may want to reduce. Losing talented employees to a rival never feels good!
This post will talk you through the types of employee turnover and what you can do to manage and minimise the ones you don’t want.
There are two main categories of employee churn: involuntary and voluntary.
Involuntary turnover is often necessary
Some employee turnover is involuntary. Employees have no choice in this. And involuntary turnover can be a part of a sustainable business model.
Seasonal staff are a great example. Your store or hotel doesn’t need the same size employee roster all year round. So you adjust to busy and quiet periods by hiring and then letting go temporary staff.
In fact, the accommodation and food services industry has the highest employee turnover, while public administration and defence is the lowest. That is in part down to the seasonal nature of the industry.
Involuntary turnover can also be a result of business growth, adaptation, or cost-cutting. Imagine your transportation business finds a provider to outsource all your fleet maintenance to, cutting your costs and improving efficiency.
Now, your in-house maintenance team suddenly have a lot less to do. So while you might find ways to train your staff and transition some employees into other roles, others may no longer be needed.
Of course, it’s never nice to cut people’s jobs out of the equation, but it is sometimes a necessary step for your business. Don’t do so lightly, but if the figures all make sense, it may be inevitable to keep up.
Voluntary turnover should be reduced
What you don’t want as a manager or owner of a small business is voluntary turnover. This is employees choosing to leave your business of their own volition. There are a variety of reasons why employees choose to leave their current roles.
Again, some are out of your control. If an employee is moving home, starting a family, taking on caring duties, or retiring, there often isn’t anything that will convince them to stay.
But there are also plenty of factors in why people change jobs that you do have some influence over. These should be the focus of your efforts if you want to reduce employee turnover in your organisation.
Fix the root causes of employee dissatisfaction
Salary, workplace culture, and career advancement are all common reasons for employees to pursue other opportunities. It isn’t always easy to simply find more money to pay people, and even doing so can cause unrest if not carefully managed.
But money concerns aren’t always that simple anyway. Perhaps some of your employees live paycheque to paycheque, and all they really need is the flexibility to be paid more often. In that case, introducing a salary advance scheme could be enough to keep them happy.
Freeing up funds for them ahead of their normal payday could make it easier for them to manage bills and unexpected costs, ensuring they don’t have to stress about money.
Workplace culture is a complex and multi-faceted topic, but there are plenty of ways you can look to improve yours. From teambuilding activities to finding new ways to encourage communication, creating a positive place to work will drive down employee churn.
Career advancement isn’t a trivial thing to offer people within the confines of your business. You can only have so many managers after all! But there are plenty of ways to give employees more responsibilities in a way that can help them move towards their longer term career goals.
Measure your progress
It’s not just your employees who should be learning either! As with any well-planned initiative, attempts to reduce employee churn should be tracked. Calculate your current baseline—what percentage of employees you’ve lost, voluntarily and involuntarily—over the last year.
Use that as your target and see how you can drive the number down. Conducting exit interviews to understand the reasons behind people leaving will help you to identify what fixes are working and what might need more effort.
With time, you should see that investing in your business, its culture, and your employees will pay dividends in terms of reducing churn.