High Staff Turnover? You're To Blame!

By James Adonis

Here's a scary thought: according to a study by Flex Executives, most employees don't leave jobs - they leave managers.

Let me ask you a question. Do you feel that people are the key to your company's success? If you don't, consider this: employee turnover can cost 1.5 times the annual salary of the employee being replaced, according to PriceWaterhouseCoopers.

So how do you keep good employees? Over 1000 people participating in a George Mason University survey reported feeling motivated by participating in interesting work, being appreciated, receiving opportunities for development, and feeling like they're part of a team.

Where did pay fit in? Employees ranked job security and good wages as important - but lower on the list.

How can you reduce turnover in your organisation? Focus on the four key elements of employee engagement: recruitment, support, relationships, and opportunities.

Recruitment

Does your hiring process focus on identifying candidates with the right skills and experience? If so, that's a great start... but do you identify the candidates with the right attitude?

Take a look at your organisation and determine what soft skills employees need. Determine if candidates have those skills by asking behavioural questions during the interview. Almost anyone can bluff their way through "opinion" questions; behavioural interviewing is based on the premise that what a candidate has actually done in the past is a good indication of what he or she will do in the future.

Your goal is to find the candidate with the attitude that fits your organisation, helping ensure they'll be more likely to stay. For example, if you need willingness to learn, ask questions like "tell me about a time you had to absorb complex information". If you need self-motivation, ask questions like "give me an example of a time you worked on a task that was repetitive and structured, and tell me how you maintained your focus and enthusiasm".

Support

Keys to providing support include communicating frequently, recognising your employees' accomplishments, and creating a positive work environment to promote a healthy work/life balance. Here are some ways to provide support that will help you to retain your best employees:

• Use intrinsic motivators. Extrinsic motivators are tangible rewards like pay increases and bonuses. Intrinsic motivators are feelings of satisfaction or accomplishment that come from within an employee: a sense of achievement, purpose, empowerment, ownership, etc. Intrinsic motivators help your employees to feel valued and important. For example, say "thank you" for a job well done. Share positive results with your team. Allow some amount of autonomy and decision-making.
• Communicate face-to-face rather than by email whenever possible. E-mail, while great for disseminating policies and procedures, is also impersonal. The best way to communicate effectively is in person.
• Create a fun work environment. Ask your team members to come up with fun ideas for a competition. Hold office sweepstakes for sporting events, horse races, or awards shows.
• Seek feedback. Ask your employees how you can help them, and how you can create a better work environment. But don't just ask - act on good suggestions.
• Promote flexibility so that people have a work/life balance.
• Reward and recognise good performance. Every team and every individual has goals (if they don't, set some fast!). When a goal is reached, celebrate. Track performance, post results, and publicly recognise employees for their achievements.

Relationships

Fail to create a close and lasting bond with your employees and the chances they'll leave increase dramatically.

Ways to develop a good relationship with employees include:

• Get to know individuals on an informal basis. People who feel you only know them as employees won't feel valued and important: they'll feel like a resource, not like a person. Easy discussion topics include weekend activities, family updates, sports, or movies. Your team won't expect you to know everything about them, but they will appreciate you care enough to try.
• Demonstrate support for differences. Every team member is unique - the more you understand and appreciate the different backgrounds, skills, and viewpoints of your employees, the more engaged and valued they'll feel.
• Maximise team interaction, both at and outside of work. At work, hold employee-led training sessions. Hold regular team meetings and encourage input and discussion. Take advantage of mentoring opportunities within the team. Outside of work, organise a team dinner; donate time or resources to those in need (as a team); take your team out for lunch (offsite if possible - if not, make sure the conversation isn't about work). Find ways, both formal and informal, to get your team together.

Opportunities

Help employees to reach their personal and professional goals and they may be employees for a very long time. Great managers provide opportunities for development, growth, and advancement. Ways to assist employees to reach their goals include:

• Send employees to seminars, conferences, and networking functions.
• Offer inter-departmental training opportunities. Not only will employees gain more skills, they'll also get a better sense of how they fit into the organisation as a whole.
• Create a development plan for each employee based on his or her individual goals.Sit privately with each team member and find out what their goals are, then help each individual to stay on track with his or her development plan.
• Help employees find a good mentor. Depending on an employee's goals, you may or may not be the best mentor for them. If you're not, help them find the right mentor.
• Involve employees in decision-making and problem-solving. You'll get great ideas, and you'll create a more engaged team.
• Empower your employees. Set expectations, set boundaries, and allow employees to make decisions within those boundaries. Not only will they feel a greater sense of ownership and responsibility, but you'll be freed up to focus on making improvements instead of monitoring day to day activities.

Competitive pay levels are important, but if you want to dramatically reduce turnover, recruit people with the right attitude, spend a portion of every day focusing on supporting employees, build positive work and personal relationships, and provide opportunities for development and growth.

To download complimentary e-books on employee engagement, retention, and recruitment (valued at $60), please click here.