Has employee turnover taken on a life of its own in your organisation?  If so, it might well be time to stop plugging gaps, and start repairing the problem once and for all … starting with establishing why your people are leaving. 

Slow punctures can be the worst kind.  Whilst you know you should take the time to find the source of the puncture and repair it, the short-term fix of topping up with more air serves the immediate purpose far better.  After all, the tyre still works, it will get you where you need to go today, and you can fix it properly tomorrow.   For an emergency strategy, this just about gets you by.  But as a longer term strategy, that time saving solution soon becomes counter productive.  Ultimately the hours you’ve spent repeatedly pumping air in would have been better spent fixing the puncture.

When you attach this analogy to employee turnover, a similar logic prevails. Yet for busy, time poor HR professionals and business leaders, it can be all too tempting to push employee exit to the bottom of the priority list, focussing instead on re-hiring, plugging gaps and, frankly, treading water.

We get it.  Managing employee exit comes with a certain set of challenges, not the least of which is time.  It can seem far easier to just contribute to the whip round, sign the leaving card and get on with the urgent process of backfilling another vacancy. Except that it isn’t … at least, not in the long term. When you stop to analyse the cost of employee turnover, its impact on morale, and the implications for the bottom line, there’s a far more compelling argument for finding and repairing the source of the puncture than just re-pumping the tyre.

There’s no set formula for calculating turnover costs, but even at its crudest level, the sums can make for some eye watering figures.  The admin behind the resignation itself, the cost of recruiting and training a replacement, the cost of short-term cover, and the impact of lost productivity (pre and post resignation) all add up to a tidy sum.  Not to mention the negative effect on team morale and employer branding, or the potential for loss of business to competitors. In any other aspect of business, a problem as costly and damaging as this would be a top priority until it were solved, and all the more so, if it were a recurrent issue.

At great{with}talent we believe firmly that exit data, collated and used effectively, is an extremely powerful tool for any employer.  Why wouldn’t you want to identify trends and patterns in leaver behaviour? As for finding out what is driving the majority of resignations (and what simple things you could be doing to prevent those triggers in the first place) – well that’s surely worth establishing, ideally before too much more talent walks out of the door to your competitors. Give your leavers a voice and you’ve suddenly got access to information that will help shape a better recruitment and engagement strategy for your business.  Let them vote with their feet alone and you’re guaranteed to see others follow swiftly behind them, time after time.

Thankfully managing employee exit doesn’t have to be time consuming for either employer or employee.  And nor does it need to be admin heavy.  Visit  http://www.lastopinion.com to find out more about how our complete leaver data collection and exit reporting service can take the administrative burden out of your leaver process, reduce your attrition costs, and improve your organisational performance through retention of your key talent.