The Most Effective Means Of Lowering Your Staff Turnover

Staff turnover can be a tricky consideration. For some purposes, it might be a good thing. For example, it might be that staff turnover in a particular role could mean promoting that current members of that position to a higher pay grade with more responsibility, while filling that role with fresh graduate recruits ready to learn.

It can also help you replace an ineffective team from the ground up, particularly if the workplace has become toxic or no functional progress can be made with those individuals in the same room. But for the most part, it is something you wish to decrease.

This is because staff turnover often leads to increased spending. You need to insure the staff member anew, you need to spend time, effort and financial investment training them, and you need to wait before they become familiar enough with your position to truly start becoming effective. Not only that, but sometimes the time it takes for them to gel with a team can take time out of their day, but this is of course immeasurable.

So how can you lower your staff turnover effectively? We would suggest with the following means.

Training

It’s important to give staff a reason to stay, even more than a competitive salary. You need to encourage them to consider their future with your firm. A solid training program can help you achieve this if you put the work into developing it well. Giving them the ability to choose their direction, to understand a clear potential path upwards, and investing in their abilities are all fantastic measures, and will dissuade them from leaving.

Staff training not only increases the value of your staff, but the value of your firm. Of course, it might be that you’re worried about investing in training and having those staff leave your firm. That’s a very real worry. It could be that adjusting their salaries correctly thanks to those new abilities can help them stay, as they might have trouble finding a competitive salary elsewhere, and because those skills have been tailored to your output as a firm, they might not be so easy to replicate elsewhere.

But more than simply helping them get better at their jobs, it can be worthwhile to train staff in the art of human, baseline skills. For example, an excellent BLS certification can help a trained employee administer basic life support should an injury take place, or should someone need immediate attention. This kind of trust shows an employer who cares about their staff, and who knows the value of each employee. It’s not hard to see why they might respond positively to this.

A Positive Office Atmosphere

A solid atmosphere can often make or break any firm. This means that ensuring yours is up to scratch might potentially help you avoid toxicity that can grow if left unchecked. Heavy crunch times of labor, stress overbearing workloads, the inability to structure team projects correctly and miscommunication can all lead to a fractured social scene in your staff, or worse.

Also, if you haven’t placed the right investment in your HR team and haven’t written an essential and clear policy of expected social behavior, it might be that workplace bullying, exclusion, or worse, harassment might all come into play. You might think this disgusting behavior to be out of place in the modern workplace, but you could be saddened and dismayed to realize just how prevalent it can be. This is why ensuring you take a proactive approach to stamping out any form of mistreatment through harsh discipline, or through instant dismissal. For example, an unwillingness to play as a team can be fixed by careful training and disciplining the perpetrators, but a sexual harassment case at your office? If verified to be true, this should result in immediate disqualification and dismissal of your contract with them. Issues like this should not be tolerated for a second.

But a positive office atmosphere is never solely achieved by punishing those with bad practices. It’s by making a conscious effort to treat everyone as part of a family. Celebrate those staff who go over and above. Encourage comfortable, smart casual clothing. Allow employees to decorate their desks. Give them ample space between one another, and efficient means of communication. Invest in team-building exercises, and ensure a staff awards ceremony or Christmas party is something to be excited by. A positive office atmosphere can truly go a long way, and help everyone merge together correctly. Priding yourself on this might help your firm expand to its next level of excellence, and that’s often something you should be looking for.

A Complaints Process

We often consider that an ‘open door policy’ is perhaps the best manner in which a manager can run their department. As employees, we wish to know that our grievances can be aired in a confidential manner. This pertains to matters of work, and of course, the human behind the role at the firm. Sometimes, it might be something quite personal that interferes with work, when perhaps incompetence or some other issue seemed to be the cause. This is why it’s essential to always have a closed office as a manager or boss so that any and all confidential conversations are kept away from the office and can then be acted upon.

But sometimes, it can be that this process is handled a little less effectively than it might be. Perhaps someone doesn’t wish to come forward because the issue is with the manager or boss themselves. Perhaps work that is being celebrated and championed as the future of the department’s pride is based on unrealistic expectations, and unhappy considerations. It’s not uncommon for a firm to rest on the insights of an employee looking in the right place at the right time. This means you want to ensure that none of this vital information is ever suppressed, even if it’s to complain about your actions in the office. If you expect your staff to be accountable, you should also volunteer yourself to that process. This is where having a systemized complaints process can work wonders. Organizing this anonymous digital system, or with your HR department could potentially allow someone not only to air an issue in confidence, but in absolute confidence. This dedication to the protection of your staff can show you truly care about them, and they will likely notice this.

Excellent Facilities

A great measure of disappointment can be felt when attending any new job role. Perhaps you were intrigued by the position, the work, the ability to finally apply the experience gained through your degree and placements, and the salary is quite competitive. Then you realize that the toilets are somewhat unkempt, the staff room is buried in belongings and storage, and the kitchen facilities are somewhat nonexistent. This can be extremely worrying.

Staff need to enjoy excellent facilities. While you might not cater to them, you should ensure that the kitchen space has plenty of utility, and is immaculate. The same goes for your toilet facilities, for storing secure items, for separate outdoor smoking areas, for parking, and for the simple measures such as heating or air conditioning an office. Even simple ventilation can go a long way in helping an office atmosphere remain worthwhile.

While staff might consider themselves okay with less-than-ideal circumstances, or at least they might think that at first, you can be sure that it will slowly erode their interest at being at your company, as every break time or lavatory trip becomes an exercise in inconvenience. It also shows your attitude to your employees if you cannot professionally provide these human requirements. Sometimes, investing in your excellent facilities could even detract staff turnover by a significant percentage. You won’t know until you try.

Recognizing Great Work

You should always give your staff a reason to go above and beyond the line of duty. While them forcibly taking the reins in a collaborative project might be surplus to requirements and quite disruptive, it’s essential for you to recognize great work where you can and offer recompense or an award of appreciation where possible. This can help those who wish to make a true career of things blossom, gathering as much utility and information as possible on any given day.

Perhaps you might wish to implement an employee of the week, month and year system. Perhaps you might arrange an award show, experienced yearly, to help your staff enjoy themselves and also become celebrated for expert work in a number of categories. Perhaps you might take a chance on staff and promote them thanks to the great work they have been conditioning. Or, it might be in the little things. For example, if your business is being hosted and celebrated in a business journal, you might submit consented-to pictures of your staff members as opposed to you, to celebrate where the real daily effort lies.

With this advice, we hope that you are able to lower your staff turnover effectively.