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| | Stop the Turnover Madness: How to Make Your Employees Want to Stay
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| Turnover is expensive.
Turnover costs companies anywhere from 16% to over 300% of annual salary (for the highly skilled—the ones most likely to leave). Companies lose productivity, valuable organizational memory, relationships, and often intellectual property. Critical activities stall and die while searching for new talent.
What's more, nearly 20% of employees will voluntarily quit their job this year. You read that right: 20%. Why? With mortgages to pay, kids to clothe and put through college, and stuff to buy, what makes a person so fed up that they quit?
Their leaders.
The fact is that to a very large degree your relationship with your people is the difference between whether people stay or go. That's what makes leadership such a tough gig. You are the glue.
What can we do to stop the turnover madness?
In order to stop the turnover madness, we must take a step back. We must acknowledge that leadership evolves as people evolve. Chris Edmonds wrote an interesting article in SmartBrief that points to evolution of the workforce:
"What motivated employees 20 or 30 years ago doesn't inspire today's millennial workers. Attracting and retaining talented employees—and keeping them engaged and inspired—requires creativity, experimentation with benefits and work structure, and more."
While I mostly agree with Edmonds' advice, there's one point I must make.
When I teach about managing multi-generational workforces I am a bit of a contrarian. One of the first points that I make is to stop putting workers into generational boxes (like Chris and nearly everyone else does these days). Here is my point: Everyone wants to be challenged, engaged, respected, and valued. It's not a generational thing.
But to Edmond's point, there is one quality that younger people share today that may make retaining them more challenging than retaining older employees. They aren't afraid to leave.
Again, I don't think this is necessarily a "Millennial" thing (baby boomers are leaving jobs too), but younger workers have way more information (thanks Internet!) and have fewer obligations to keep them stuck in one place. They aren't afraid to let their life be in limbo for a bit. They're willing to bet on themselves. For example, only 16% of millennials cite their career ambitions as having anything to do with climbing a corporate ladder. Meanwhile, 66% report starting their own business as their ultimate goal. This confidence and fearlessness has paid off (literally) for many. CNBC reported in June that "nearly a quarter of U.S. millionaires are millennials."
Our challenge, then, is to create a workplace where all workers, young and old, feel like they are being fulfilled and making progress on their goals. We want them to stay. We want to have confidence that our investment in them is an investment into our organization...
Click here to discover the 4 things employees really want. |
| | Check out our new book! The Approachability Playbook: 3 Essential Habits for Thriving Leaders and Teams |
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