A little while ago I was asked, “What is an acceptable level of staff turnover?” The first question I had was, “How long do your people stay?”
Her answer, “An average of four years”, equates to an annual turnover of 25%, which she didn’t think was very acceptable at all. She listed cost of recruitment, loss of knowledge, and effect on her reputation as the most important impacts for her.
Employee Engagement was ineffective:
The firm had invested heavily in Employee Engagement initiatives with little return for the time and money. The working conditions, products and services were all good and ethically sound but surveys continued to show dissatisfaction. Efforts to change people’s attitudes had minimal impact, whether they be senior management or shop floor.
We concluded that “employee engagement” starts with who you hire and looked back into the processes for bringing people into the business.
Departures with less than 12 months’ service:
When we took a closer look at the length of service, there were far too many who left in their first twelve months. According to many surveys this is not unusual, in fact one study has indicated that 47 percent of staff turnover occurs during the first 90 days of employment (Recruitment Solutions, April 2007). That seems incredibly high to me and I would be interested to hear what your experience has been.
In any event, this is a significant number. It drags down the average for length-of-service and inflates the annual turnover figures. It also indicates a serious problem that needs to be addressed. In almost every case, the underlying cause was a failure to meet expectations, either for the employee, for the company, or both.
Main Problems:
A review of their recruitment process revealed several areas in need of improvement:
- The advertising of the positions was missing the mark due to:
- Insufficient detail about the job and qualifications, which meant too many applicants were unsuitable, and
- Not selling the benefits of working at the company meant missing out on the best candidates who have plenty of other choices
- Screening of initial applications relied heavily on reading resumes which are notoriously poor indicators of suitability. Poor candidates were being advanced while some excellent ones were being overlooked.
- The interviewing was quite good with specific questions and weightings for each job. However, there were too many duds being asked in for interview, wasting time and making other mediocre applicants look a lot better than they were.
- The induction too was quite good except it wasn’t being followed due to dull material and time restraints.
The Solution:
The solution was surprisingly simple and produced startling results virtually overnight. All we needed to do was provide:
- copy writing and distribution support for the advertising,
- predictive hiring technology for the assessment of applicants, and
- online training to facilitate inductions.
There was some time and effort required to get the right processes in place but, once set, they are very easy to maintain.
Free, No-Obligation Review:
If you have any concerns about staff turnover or that you may be missing out on the best candidates, let’s see what we can suggest for you. It will cost you nothing and you will get great ideas that you can implement yourself straight away.
