The High Cost of Turnover

PART 1: Why turnover matters

Most employers intuitively know that employee turnover is costing them money, although few know how or have attempted to quantify the cost. A huge cost for most businesses is the stress, overwork, and dissatisfaction experienced by the remaining employees when someone leaves. 
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Think about the mental and physical impact turnover has on your staff as they contemplate...

• How many added tasks are assigned to me?
• How long will I have these added responsibilities?
• How much of my time will be required to teach the new person how to do their job?
• How much extra time at work is required in order to complete everything?
• How much of my life outside of work is disrupted by these added responsibilities?
• And eventually...
  • Am I being paid enough for all this added work and hassle?
  • Is it time for me to start looking for a job somewhere else?

The smaller your business, the more difficult it can be to navigate turnover without creating dissatisfaction. Even if you take on much of the work as the owner, it means that you are distracted from your core responsibilities which can make you less effective in important tasks like communicating clearly with customers, employees, and vendors and providing clear direction to your remaining staff.

Fixing critical business issues such as staunching the loss caused by serial turnover, requires a commitment to multiple actions. A great analogy is to think of serial turnover as a severed femoral artery. Although the first step is to place a tourniquet above the wound to prevent immediate death from bleeding out, this treatment alone is insufficient to sustain life. A patient with a severed artery must receive surgical treatment to repair the artery, followed by treatment of the wound to avoid infection and aid repair of the surrounding tissue. 

In this multi-part series, I will share with you my insights about how to craft your comprehensive treatment plan. We will explore the causes of serial turnover, ways to eliminate it, and how to think differently about managing your business during staff vacancies. In my experience, the answers are not complex but do require focused effort. Most importantly, you will learn why there are no short cuts or magic bullets and why actions such as improving selection tools and processes are only tourniquets and therefore insufficient to restore health to your business.

Are you ready to get started? Here's your first assignment. Please grab a notebook and write your answers to the following questions:

• Why do people apply for a job with my business?
• What method(s) do I use to source job applicants?
• What decision criteria do I use to select employees?

​Check back in a couple of days for the next part in this series. Feel free to post comments or questions below or contact me directly if you would like to have a personalized conversation to jump start your EXTRAORDINARY year.