Photo: Amy Hirschi // Unsplash
Do you find that your employee turnover rates are higher than you’d like?
Small businesses struggle with employee retention for plenty of reasons, especially in the uncertain business climate we’ve experienced in the past few years.
According to Mercer, the average voluntary turnover rate in the US from 2022-2023 was just over 17%, a significant drop from the previous year. Average employee turnover rates vary widely by industry, and can depend on demographic factors like age, marital status, and education.
If you’re feeling that there’s too much turnover in your organization, try not to get bent out of shape – but do take note if your best talent doesn’t seem to be sticking around.
With a little legwork, we can help you uncover some reasons why people are leaving so that we can reduce the chances of this happening in the future.
We helped one nonprofit reduce their overall turnover by 23% by listening to the unique needs, values, and talents of their top staff.
And take it from me… sometimes finding solutions is easier than you might think!
If you’re struggling with a higher turnover rate and you’d like to work on this, our HR consultants have some amazing strategies to help. We’re here to diagnose turnover and help managers put everything together in a way that helps them find and keep great people.
(And PS: Not all turnover is bad - I wrote about that here a few years ago.)
Why Employees Leave
There are so many reasons that might encourage people to leave – sometimes before they barely get a chance to settle in.
Compensation (of course) is a crucial consideration, but there are so many other factors at play here which can relate to:
Recruiting and/or hiring problems: Not being able to find a best-fit candidate or looking in the wrong places in the first place can be a recipe for disaster. Sometimes a bad fit comes directly from bad hiring.
Personal reasons: Personal, family, and/or relocation changes are big - according to Mercer (2020), personal / family issues accounted for 62% of “quits,” and relocation accounted for 42%.
Career succession and career changes: According to Mercer (2020), 81% of US people who quit left because they had a better job opportunity, and 29% were seeking a career change.
Employee well-being and/or morale: Work-life balance and wellness programs are becoming increasingly popular as burnout and “quiet quitting” are on the rise.
Last but perhaps most important is cultural fit – sometimes you just can’t squish a square peg into a round hole.
Organizations and individuals don’t always know what makes them stand out from the crowd – but in my experience, successful organizations (and people, honestly) know who they are and own it.
The solution to this? I like to say: Find your weird.
What makes your organization stand out is the exact thing that will make a new hire absolutely love being on your team.
Getting Your Stellar Employees to Stick Around
Okay let’s face it… we can’t “make” anyone stick around if they don’t want to!
But our HR consultants have an excellent organizational assessment tool that we use with our clients – they seem to absolutely love this and always get a lot out of it.
The Weisbrod Six Box Model details elements of an organization that drives culture, employee satisfaction, and productivity by assessing six “boxes”:
Purpose
Structure
Relationships
Rewards
Leadership
Supporting/Helpful Mechanisms
Finally, the assessment will be done in consideration of the external environment and how this may influence the internal workplace.
One reason this approach is so popular is that it is generally a collective process. In most cases, after we talk to a good majority of your team, we are able to gather information about employee factors that impact motivation, engagement, and performance.
Here’s an overview of each section and examples of client success when it comes to employee turnover and retention.
Purpose
Sometimes, employees and organizations are not a good match in terms of values, goals, or work style. But value alignment is important in setting a positive work culture.
Do your team members understand the mission of your organization?
Do they understand the overarching goals and where they fit in?
Addressing the reason your business exists is really key here. You’ll want to investigate your mission and vision statements, as well as strategic objectives, and ensure that employees are on board in the context of their respective roles.
Conforming your core purpose, values, and mission regularly can help with immediate employee engagement, as well as provide clarity for your recruiting team when it comes to hiring.
Structure
Many organizations are reconsidering their org structures, including where and how people work, after working from home became the norm through COVID.
Who they report to, how they report, when they need to be in the office, these are all big factors as there are so many remote jobs out there. How do you get people into the office when they know there are other options out there?
Something we might consider reviewing here is how well the org structure fits the purpose, contributes to communication, and so on.
Relationships
It doesn’t matter whether we are talking about our personal or professional relationships: they can be challenging, and they take work. With a large team of professionals, relationship management between all teams and leaders (yes, even people who don’t interact regularly) is critical.
Poor relationships with supervisors, managers, and other staff can be a significant driver of employee turnover. A lack of effective communication, support, and respect from leadership can lead employees to seek work environments that they perceive to be more positive.
High turnover in leadership, perhaps due to communication or relationship issues, is also something that can contribute to frequent staff changes.
For an assessment, we might look at things like how people communicate, how conflict is resolved, how well relationships are managed, what collaboration strategies are in place, how well people relate to each other, etc.
Rewards
Yes of course compensation and/or benefits from a competitor can send your talent flying to the next company.
And we don’t need to tell you twice that most people are motivated by money… but that’s not the only thing to consider.
While we always encourage fair pay, we also make sure that companies have a solid understanding of what else they can offer in terms of perks and rewards, as well as how they recognize talent. This might look different for different roles and individuals.
Some people are more motivated by financial rewards than others, and it’s up to you (with our help, maybe) to gain an understanding of what really makes your staff feel special. Rewards can come in many forms to do with lifestyle, work-life balance, and priorities like education, health, or financial planning and management.
Flexibility from the traditional work week is another big issue right now. A good example of a simple way to promote flexibility is our Summer Hours program, which allows employees more flexibility around weekends through the summer. Our clients seem to be loving this too – if you want to learn more, let us know!
Leadership
Leadership is potentially the most important piece of the puzzle. Managers often want to hire people who work a lot and work hard, but this isn’t always the best case scenario. Sometimes people push themselves to the limit, only to lead to burnout.
Non-managers and managers alike can easily be pushed to the limit, and need ongoing support to ensure that they are able to offer their best.
Here, we might investigate areas like leadership styles, mission, vision, adaptability, relational skills, conflict (even perceived conflict or toxicity), leadership versus management, and ethical leadership.
Supporting / Helpful Mechanisms
What exactly is meant by supporting mechanisms? Here are some aspects that fall under this sixth box:
Planning, budgeting, controlling, monitoring
Systems, policies, procedures
Communication strategies
Performance evaluations
Training and development
One of my favorite examples of how this really helped an IT client retain a very high-level IT Pro. The company turned on the heat at 8:00 AM and he is an early bird who had been sitting in the cold for 20+ years from 6:00 AM – 8:00 AM and he wasn’t a complainer and no one had ever asked! It was a simple adjustment that retained a very high-level employee.
Let Our HR Consultants Help You Reduce Employee Turnover
When employees go above and beyond, when they make an effort towards company goals and help their coworkers, this counts for a lot. Make sure they are recognized in a way that motivates them and makes them excited to come to work tomorrow and in the long term.
Weisbord’s Six Box Framework is just one of many tools that we have for assessing businesses from the ground up.
From operational assessments to recruitment and hiring, we’re here to help our amazing clients attract and retain the right talent. We’re really good at finding “gaps” and cost-effective ways to fix them.
Ready to get started? Get in touch with one of our awesome HR consultants!
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