What to Do When You’re Experiencing High Turnover

Amongst the most frustrating and even confounding issues a business may face is a high turnover rate. Although turnover itself is something that will occur in any business, high turnover signifies a greater issue. Something with the fundamentals of your practice, policies, and/or individual management may be conflicting with the expectations of your employees. Having excellent soft skills helps with tackling these types of problems, and finding the necessary solutions.

A full overview of your work environment will allow you to create an outline, giving you an idea of where the issue may be. As mentioned previously, soft skills play a major role here, since the best method of getting answers is from the employees themselves. Your approach will also decide the validity of any rapport. For instance, it’s easy for an employee to say everything's fine and rate their environment as such. However, it may be based on their perspective of you or your intent as a business. They may gloss over seemingly small issues they feel but disregard. If those “small issues” are consistent amongst staff, then it may be a cog to a larger wheel.

Here are some key strategies for finding the cause of the problem, and the best methods of solving it.

Provide Proper Compensation and Benefits

This is the first and foremost issue. Most businesses don’t get success by paying their employees the bottom of the barrel, regardless of their efforts. If you do, absolutely anyone can steal them from you. Think about what you are offering and to who, to what positions, and keep them up to date. One of the biggest issues with many benefit packages is that they tend to be outdated - based on old concepts no longer relevant to modern industries. Create a thoughtful survey, based on your employees’ goals outside of work, and what ideas they may have for their future. This will give insightful knowledge of what your workforce is actually expecting for their efforts.

Offer Flexibility to Combat High Turnover

This can be hard to accomplish depending on the industry, but it’s one of the best ways of retaining and attracting employees. This can even substitute the above point, as it gives them more control over their income, without having to feel restricted to a single company. To make things easier on your end, invest in a mobile timesheet to keep an eye on productivity and project timelines.

Produce or Strengthen Your Culture

The culture of the workplace plays a major role. It helps people collaborate easier and lays a path to follow. When you aren’t instilling confidence or encouraging motivation, your workers may grow stagnant, and feel the often repetitive nature of most work. Along with rewarding key players, it’s also great to keep the whole unit up to date on successes and progress. This gives them a feeling of accomplishment and sets a scale they can work with to gauge their own success.

Show Them Your Commitment

The image of the fat cat sitting, smoking their cob pipe at the top of the haystack is not the image you want. Commitment to your investment and to those who allow it to function will not only enhance your image as a leader, it can also make your employees more passionate about your company and goals. Show that you’re committed to the long haul and that those who follow this commitment will be treated with the value they put in. That can keep people with you through more than just business.

Promote Camaraderie

This bonds people to each other, and allows individuals to stick with hardships longer. Essentially, it creates a cohesive unit that works off each other for each other, and in turn to the benefit of your business. Many people who might feel unaccomplished will push through if they have colleagues to relate to. It is also common for bosses to get answers “through the grapevine.” Some people may never mention dissatisfaction and feel the only solution is resignation, but having a comrade allows them to relay potential turnover, in the interest of helping a coworker.

Have Events When Possible

The best way to approach this is with employee achievements and completing business goals (even if they are exaggerated). This is big for moral, and many live life constantly attending events. This literally puts them in the workplace. Word of advice though, never base events around birthdays.

Wrapping Up

Turnover is hurting a lot of industries. Many people are able to build on their own investments or collaborate towards larger products with less seed money, and have a good chance at making initial profit. The options have greatly expanded for personal financial growth, and being associated with a large corporation or sponsor in just no longer necessary. So it is extremely important to recognize talent and motivation early and to respect the commitments an employee offers you.