For companies, turnover is always a major concern. After all, when churn rates are high, it holds the organization back. Departments may end up shorthanded, and productivity can drop. Plus, recruiting, hiring, and onboarding a stream of new employees is costly, hurting the bottom line.
If your company is struggling with retention, you’re in luck. By understanding what may be driving workers away, you can make meaningful changes that reduce turnover. If you aren’t sure where to begin, here are some of the most common reasons employees don’t stick around and what you can do about them.
Subpar Managers
A major driving force behind why many employees leave companies is subpar managers. If managers are disengaged or ineffective, tend toward micromanaging, or don’t acknowledge their team’s efforts, many top performers won’t stick around for long.
Examine turnover rates at the manager level. See if there are clusters of employees leaving, and if so, spend time looking at that manager’s actions and approaches to see if you can identify an issue. If you do, intervene by offering the manager training that helps them improve in critical areas, creating a chance for them to resolve the problem and boost retention in their department or team.
Disengagement
When an employee is disengaged, they often struggle. Whether it’s boredom, dissatisfaction with the culture, burnout, or any other issue, failing to address it usually means that the worker won’t stay for much longer.
Spend some time exploring engagement levels. You may want to use anonymous surveys, one-on-one meetings, retention interviews, or a range of other techniques to identify problems that may be leading to disengagement. Then, as you identify sources of dissatisfaction, work to address them.
In some cases, this may require company-wide adjustments, such as if a poor culture has developed. However, individual employee-level actions might also be necessary, particularly in instances of boredom and burnout.
If you can fix the root cause of disengagement, you can boost job satisfaction. When you do, turnover metrics will improve.
Recruitment Missteps
Sometimes, turnover rises because the wrong workers are being hired from the beginning. If you sacrifice the new hire’s quality in favor of speed, odds are higher that the employee isn’t actually a great fit for the job. If that occurs, frustration can build from multiple directions. The worker may struggle in the role, leading to dissatisfaction. Additionally, their manager might have to spend a lot of time correcting errors and improving the worker’s capabilities, at times in vain.
Ideally, companies should make sure that the quality of the match is the top priority. When you hire a candidate with the right skill set and attitude, their odds of excelling are higher. As a result, they may be more satisfied in the role, and their manager will be happier with their performance, both of which can lead to retention improvements.
If you want to make sure that you hire high-quality candidates, partnering with the team at The Advance Group can help. Contact us to learn more about our recruitment services and see how working with us can make finding the ideal candidate for any role easier than ever.
