High employee turnover is a nightmare for many businesses. It precipitates unnecessary hiring and onboarding costs, hurts brand reputation, and derails business growth. As businesses around the world restructure and re-strategize for growth in the new normal, you should expect competitors to at least try to lure away your best employees. You should not allow that to happen! If your company is struggling with high employee turnover, you need to act quickly and turn things around. Here are 5 things you need to do ASAP!
Understand what causes the high employee turnover
As we have mentioned, the key reason why employees are quitting your company is that your competitors are luring them away. The question you must ask yourself, therefore, is this: why has it been so easy for the competition to raid your backyard and steal your top talents? You will find answers to this question by coming down to the employees who’ve stuck around and asking them why they think their colleagues decided to quit. Is it the company culture they don’t like? Do they feel insufficiently trained or supported to perform optimally and grow their careers? Is the company’s mission or vision uninspiring to them? Do they feel not adequately supported for work-life balance? Could employee compensation and recognition have anything to do with their decision to quit? Is the workplace toxic?
Bottom line: Ask as many questions as possible and incentivize employees to answer as honestly as possible. If there are problems that you can fix, move with speed to address them to stop any further exodus.
Create a healthy workplace culture
Whether or not your employees feel that there are issues that need fixing, it is incumbent upon you as their boss to create a workplace environment that anyone would feel privileged to work in. It is almost impossible for competitors to steal your important employees if:
- The administration supports an inclusive and collaborative culture. You should implement policies that help all of your employees to respect, support, love, and help one another. These policies can be centered on things like mentorship programs and team-building initiatives.
- Salaries and other benefits are above industry averages or at least at pace with your direct competitors.
- Employees have the autonomy needed to research, innovate, create, experiment, and excel in their duties.
- Employees are supported to maintain a healthy work/life balance, e.g. through flexible working.
- New hires are sufficiently trained to excel at the company while existing employees are supported to take refresher courses and grow their skillsets.
- Top performers are recognized, acknowledged, and respected for their hard work.
- There is proper communication and flow of feedback. You need to make sure that everyone understands their role and that the feedback you give is both constructive and accurate.
Rethink your hiring process
A good talent acquisition process will help you not only attract high-quality employees but also retain them. That is why you should do more than look at resumes and application letters when hiring new employees. You need to start considering a candidate’s temperament, emotional intelligence, personality, and motivation during the screening and interview phases. You also need to start writing job descriptions that reflect your brand reputation, hiring needs, and expectations. Make sure that all candidates are clear about their specific responsibilities, available career growth opportunities, the company culture they have to subscribe to, and what you can provide them in return. Two more things:
- Always run pre-employment background checks and check references before hiring anyone. You can hire a background check company to handle the background checks on your behalf.
- Always ask candidates to perform applicable assessments before, during, and after the interview. You can never be too careful especially with so many forgeries these days.
Consider tapping into foreign labor markets
Foreign employees bring global insights and unique skills to your company, which enhances creativity and knowledge sharing. A multi-cultured workforce also promotes inclusivity and diversity because colleagues are able to check their biases better when no race, religion, or sexuality is predominant in the workplace. What you will have as a result is a rewarding professional, happier, and uplifting environment that no one would wish to leave. Further to this, foreign freelancers are a viable short-term and cost-effective solution to the demoralizing workloads that sometimes lower employee productivity and push them to quit.
However, there are many risks and regulations that plague international recruitments. The good thing is that Professional Employer Organizations (PEO) provide all the employment solutions you need when hiring staff overseas. You will find local PEO in Canada, the US, Europe, Asia, and around the world that will gladly become the legal employer for your multinational workforce. That means they will take over things such as tax, payroll, and compliance, so you don’t have to worry about landing in legal trouble.
Use automation to support employees
Your employees may not tell you this but those tedious, repetitive day-to-day tasks you assign them aren’t exactly inspiring or rewarding. Some of them will quit just because they feel tied down by tasks that don’t help them grow professionally or that don’t utilize their talents to the maximum. Finding the right technology to automate these tedious and repetitive tasks will free employees and allow them to focus on the work that they’re actually skilled in and were hired to do.
Final word
There isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution to high employee turnover. Our tips will only help you manage the turnover and lower it to an acceptable rate. But even with that in mind, you must always work towards meeting your employees’ needs and keep them as happy and engaged as you can. Without that, competitors will keep having a field day in your backyard.
