Join us here on the blog every Friday for a new tip on employee retention. This week, we’ll start off with the fundamentals in understanding turnover by looking at how you can better understand the reasons behind it and use this information to your benefit in retaining your best employees.
Understanding workplace turnover is crucial for all businesses — as the saying goes: “We are only as strong as our weakest link.” Turnover is a difficult time for everyone involved, but understanding the basic fundamentals of why will go a long way in helping your business. If your business has suffered with high turnover, it’s important to get at the root cause of the problem before you can begin problem solving. Although it may seem like a daunting task, it starts simply with a little research and analysis.
Asking the Right Questions
To start with, we need to ask the right questions and look in the right places. Company reports and employee archives are useful sources of data on retention. Ask the following questions when researching retention data:
- What percentage of employees separate from the organization annually/quarterly?
- Of those who separate from the organization, what percentage leaves voluntarily?
- What percentage does the organization lay off due to lack of work?
- What percentage does the organization fire due to disciplinary and/or productivity issues?
- Are there systematic differences based on demographics (e.g. females vs. males, etc.)
- Are there systematic differences based on occupations, departments, supervisors, etc…?
Gathering Opinions
Once you have looked at the data, the next step is to speak with people about the issue of turnover. Current and former employees, and their managers, have a wealth of information about retention, so follow up regularly and ask their opinions. Here are several ways you could approach staff to discuss turnover:
- Conduct exit surveys shortly before employees separate from the organization.
- Survey former employees to gain insight into retention and satisfaction issues.
- Survey existing employees to gain insights into what they value and need, their intentions to stay, and their career goals. To ensure responses are objective and accurate, consider hiring a third party to survey existing employees and to summarize the results.
Conducting Exit Interviews
Exit interviews can be powerful tools in understanding the reasons behind why employees leave. Firstly, the exit interview can give an organization direct answers and reasons as to why an employee is leaving, secondly it can allow the leaving employee to transfer knowledge to a replacement or to the supervisor, and thirdly it can provide organizations with an objective and constructive analysis of the organization as an employer.
Leaving employees are generally more forthcoming and unbiased in their opinions than current employees, so this is a good chance to gather useful criticism. The idea of conducting an exit interview might be uncouth for some organizations, as corporate insecurity and defensiveness can impede including exit interviews as part of general employee policy. Naturally some managers do not want to hear criticism, though it will be beneficial to see the negative as a positive means for change and improvement.
Questions for the Exit Interview
Start the exit interview with a general discussion about their time with your organization and try to make the employee feel at ease so they will be comfortable answering your questions. Do ensure that the employee knows that the purpose of the interview is to gather information that can help in the future and that there will be no repercussions from the opinions they provide. Ask questions that will provide your organization with information that is actionable for improvement. Do keep in mind this interview is more about listening, so let them speak and only direct the interview with key questions to get at the cause of the issues. Here are some example questions:
- Why have you decided to leave the company?
- Did you discuss your concerns with anyone in the company before deciding to leave?
- Did something specific occur during your time that made you decide to leave?
- What does your new company offer that encouraged you to accept their offer and leave this company?
- Tell me about the relationship with your manager?
- In your job, what did you most enjoy?
- Was there anything you disliked about your job? What would you change?
- Did you feel you had the required resources and support to complete the tasks in your job? If not, what was missing?
- Were your job responsibilities clearly communicated during the interview process and orientation?
- What are the key attributes that we should look for in your replacement?
- Can you provide any other comments that will help us to understand why you are leaving, how we could improve, and what we could do to become a better employer?
The exit interview also provides a great opportunity to resolve any issues with disgruntled employees, especially those that are not voluntarily leaving. Try to make it a time when any “bad feelings” can be voiced, and the employee will leave with closure and well wishes for the future.
Following these tips will allow you to gain a greater understanding of why people leave, and how you can prevent further turnover of your current employees. Join us next week as we take it a step further, from understanding turnover to curbing turnover — making an effective action plan.
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