We have all seen the surveys and
studies that tell us why employees leave. What those studies don’t tell us is
that sometimes, turnover can be a positive thing.
A certain amount of turnover is
good for any organization, Peggy Pedwano, human capital strategist at Halogen Software, told us in a recent interview. “It’s important to continually be
bringing in new staff with fresh ideas and perspective,” she said. ”And
turnover is great when the employees who leave are low performing, or aren’t a
good cultural fit.”
The challenge, she said, is to stop
employee turnover among high-performing and high-potential employees and to
keep turnover rates of other employees at a healthy level.
How to do that? Pedwano offered
some ideas:
Know who your best people are
Before you can determine if employee
turnover’s a problem, you’ve got to identify the people you want to hang on to:
high performers.
Not as simple as it sounds, Pedwano
says.
Are managers fairly and
consistently rating employee performance? It’s not uncommon to have
managers inflate performance ratings. And managers with reputations as “hard
markers” aren’t hard to find.
Thus, companies may need to do some
rating calibration to ensure the rating scale is being consistently applied.
Pedwano’s sugestions: Ask managers to
think about each employee’s potential for promotion. You may also want to
gather 360-degree feedback on candidates, conduct interviews, or ask employees
to evaluate their peers in order to put managers’ assessments in perspective.
Know what’s important to each
individual
Once the “keepers” are identified,
employers need to determine what’s important to them as individuals.
The list often includes such things
as salary levels, opportunities for development and career advancement, and
flextime/telecommuting opportunities. But those things can also change over an
individual’s career.
So it’s important to stay current with
high performers on what motivates and engages them, and what demotivates and
disengages them.
“Then you can work to satisfy their
needs — ensuring, of course, that the actions you take are good for the
business overall,” Pedwano says.
Continually train managers and
leaders
An employee’s relationship with
his/her manager is a key contributor to employee engagement, satisfaction and
retention – that’s a given in today’s workplace.
The problem, Pedwano says, is that
“Being a manager requires a whole host of skills that just aren’t innate to
most people. Everyone has areas of strength and weakness.”
So ongoing, progressive training for
all managers and leaders is key to continual improvement in
management/leadership knowledge, skills and experience.
Hold regular stay interviews
One practice that’s been shown
to help stop employee turnover is holding regular stay
interviews – not just with high performers, but even with those who
regularly meet expectations.
“Stay interviews help you uncover
what makes your top performers ‘tick and stick,’” says Pedwano. “They’re the
opposite of an exit interview.”
In a stay interview, managers find
out what motivates employees to work and put their best foot forward every day.
And once managers have that knowledge, they have the tools to retain their best
and brightest.
Stay interviews can be done on a
formal basis, or the information can be gathered informally through regular
manager-employee interactions or one-on-one meetings, according to Pedwano.
The only hard-and-fast rule is that
they be held regularly.
Reference
& Source: www.hrmorning.com
