8 Proven Strategies to Reduce Employee Turnover

Over 47 million people quit their jobs during the Great Resignation. [1] The situation worsened after 4.2 million workers in the US left their jobs in 2022. That’s not all, over 61% of the US workforce was thinking about handing in their resignations in 2023. [2] However, this is not the end of the world. Many companies have found a solution to employee turnover. Honeywell, a company known for its expertise in manufacturing aircraft engines, focuses on company resilience and strong leadership. Out of 114,000 of its employees, only 23% of them are likely to leave. [3] All signs point out that now, more than ever - is the time to put turnover reduction as your top priority. But how do you work on that successfully? Let’s take a look.

Essential Turnover Reduction Strategies

1. Optimize From The Start

One of the key factors that determines your company’s success is the quality and retention of your employees. However, hiring for the long term is not an easy task. Lucky for you, there are many tools out there that can help you construct a strategic approach. You can optimize your hiring with an ATS like Manatal. strategy is an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) such as Manatal. Using its resume parsing feature, you filter through a large volume of resumes within a few clicks. The AI-driven scorecard feature also helps ensure you’re placing the right candidates in your empty seats.

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2. Improve the Company Culture

A positive culture is the foundation of employee retention. It is the set of shared values, beliefs, norms, and behaviors that define how people interact within an organization. Culture can have a significant impact on employees’ attitudes, emotions, and behaviors towards their work and their employer. With a positive culture, you can win the turnover reduction strategy by creating a sense of belonging, alignment, and purpose among employees. You can also foster collaboration, innovation, diversity, and inclusion within your business.

To build a positive culture, you need to:

• Define your core values and vision.
• Model them through your leadership style.
• Reinforce them through your policies, practices, and recognition programs.
• Celebrate them through your stories and events.

3. Create a Strong Employee Value Proposition (EVP)

An EVP is a set of benefits and rewards that an employer offers to its employees in exchange for their contribution and performance. It includes tangible aspects such as compensation, benefits, career development, and recognition, as well as intangible aspects such as culture, values, purpose, and work environment. It helps attract and retain talent by communicating what makes your company unique and desirable as an employer.

How to create a strong EVP:

• Understand Your Target Audience: Identify the specific needs, desires, and motivations of your target employees.
• Define Your Employer Brand: Determine what sets your company apart and what makes it an attractive place to work.
• Conduct Research on Existing Employees: Gather feedback and insights from current employees to understand what they value most about working at your company.
• Identify Key Employee Benefits: Determine the unique benefits and perks your company offers that align with the needs and aspirations of your target employees.
• Develop a Compelling EVP Statement: Craft a clear and concise statement that effectively communicates the value and benefits of working at your company.
• Align Your EVP with Your Company Culture: Ensure that your EVP reflects the culture and values of your organization to attract employees who will thrive in that environment.
• Communicate Your EVP Internally and Externally: Share your EVP with current employees and potential candidates through various channels like company websites, job postings, social media, and internal communications.
• Evaluate and Adapt: Continuously monitor and evaluate your EVP to ensure it remains relevant and competitive in attracting and retaining top talent.

4. Provide Flexible Work Options

Flexible work options are arrangements that allow employees to have more control over when, where, and how they work. They can include flexible hours, remote work, compressed workweek, job sharing, or part-time work. Flexible work options can help companies reduce turnover by enhancing employees’ work-life balance, autonomy, satisfaction, and productivity.

They can also help to accommodate the diverse needs and preferences of different generations, life stages, and personal situations. To be able to provide flexible work options, you need to:

• Provide flexible work options.
• Establish clear policies and guidelines.
• Ensure effective communication and collaboration tools.
• Foster trust and accountability.
• Measure outcomes rather than inputs.

5. Invest in Employee Development

Employee development is the process of providing employees with opportunities to learn new skills, acquire new knowledge, expand their roles and responsibilities, and advance their careers. Employee development can help to reduce turnover by increasing employees’ motivation, engagement, performance, and loyalty. It can also help prepare employees for future challenges and changes and build a talent pipeline for your business.

Investing in employee development requires you to:

• Conduct regular performance reviews and feedback sessions.
• Identify employees’ strengths, interests, and goals.
• Offer various learning modalities such as coaching, mentoring, training courses, online resources, etc.
• Support employees’ career progression.

6. Leverage Employee Feedback

Employee feedback is the information that employees provide about their experiences, opinions, and suggestions regarding their work and their employer. Employee feedback enables you to identify and address issues and concerns that affect employees’ satisfaction and retention. As a result, your turnover rate will be reduced. Moreover, it can also help you improve your processes, products, and services, and enhance your decision-making and problem-solving.

Employee feedback is a valuable source of information and insight that can help you improve your workplace culture and performance. To leverage employee feedback, you need to:

• Collect it regularly through various methods such as surveys, interviews, focus groups, exit interviews, and so on.
• Analyze it objectively and comprehensively.
• Act on it promptly and effectively.
• Communicate it transparently and respectfully.

7. Soft Skills Are Also Important

Soft skills are interpersonal and communication skills that enable employees to work well with others, adapt to changes, solve problems, and handle stress. Soft skills are often overlooked or undervalued by employers, who tend to focus more on the technical or hard skills of their employees. However, soft skills are also important for employee retention, as they can enhance employee engagement, satisfaction, loyalty, and performance.

You should invest in developing and improving the soft skills of your employees by:

• Providing regular feedback, coaching, mentoring, training, and recognition.
• You should also assess the soft skills of your potential hires during the recruitment process, using behavioral interviews, personality tests, or simulations.

8. Pay Attention to the Onboarding

Onboarding is the process of integrating new hires into an organization and providing them with the necessary information, tools, resources, and support to succeed in their roles. Onboarding is crucial for reducing employee turnover, as it can help new hires feel welcomed, valued, respected, and engaged from day one. On the other hand, a poor onboarding experience can lead to frustration, confusion, dissatisfaction, and early departure.

You should design and implement a comprehensive and effective onboarding program that covers the following aspects:

• Pre-boarding: This is the period between the acceptance of the job offer and the first day of work. You should communicate with the new hires regularly, provide them with relevant information and documents, and prepare their workstations and equipment.
• Orientation: On your new hires’ first day or week of work, you should welcome them warmly, introduce them to their colleagues and managers, explain the organizational culture and values, and clarify the expectations and goals of their roles.
• Training: In the period of learning and development, you should provide the new hires with adequate training and guidance on their tasks and responsibilities, as well as feedback on their progress and performance.
• Socialization: During the period of building relationships and networks, you should facilitate the integration of the new hires into their teams and departments, as well as encourage them to participate in social events and activities.

Turnover Reduction 101: Turnover Types

To make the most out of turnover reduction strategies, it’s also important to understand employer turnover on a deeper level. So essentially, it refers to the process of replacing an employee with a new one. It can be voluntary or involuntary and is measured by the number or percentage of workers leaving a company within a specific time frame.

Types of Employee Turnover

• Internal turnover: when an employee changes positions or departments within the same organization. This can be positive if it allows the employee to grow and learn new skills, or negative if it disrupts the workflow and creates knowledge gaps.
• External turnover: when an employee leaves the organization completely. This can be positive if it removes a low-performing or toxic employee, or negative if it results in losing a high-performing or valuable employee.
• Voluntary turnover: when an employee chooses to leave the company for another job opportunity or personal reasons. Some of the common reasons for voluntary turnover are lack of opportunity for growth or career development, natural career progression, internal promotion or transfer, feeling overworked or burned out, negative feelings towards boss or management, dissatisfaction with pay or benefits, poor work-life balance, conflict with co-workers or customers, relocation or family issues.
• Involuntary turnover: when an employee is terminated by the employer for performance, conduct, or economic reasons. Some of the common reasons for involuntary turnover are poor performance or low productivity, behavioral issues or misconduct, violation of policies or rules, changing business needs or goals, budget cuts or downsizing, structural reorganization or mergers, retirement, or health issues.

Negative Effects of Employee Turnover

• Loss of knowledge and expertise: when an employee leaves, they take with them their skills, experience, and insights that are valuable for the organization. This can create knowledge gaps and affect the quality and efficiency of work.
• Decreased customer satisfaction: They may also affect the relationships and trust they have built with customers. This can lead to lower customer satisfaction and loyalty and reduced sales and revenue.
• Lowered morale and engagement: when an employee walks out the door, they may impact the morale and engagement of their co-workers. There’s a chance that it would lead to lower motivation, commitment, and productivity among the remaining staff, as well as increased absenteeism and turnover.
• Increased costs and risks: Once an employee leaves, they also incur costs and risks for the organization. These include:
• Recruitment costs: such as advertising, screening, interviewing, and hiring new candidates.
• Training costs: like orientation, onboarding, mentoring, and coaching new employees.
• Productivity costs: which include lower output, quality, and efficiency during the transition period.
• Legal costs: such as severance pay, unemployment benefits, lawsuits, or arbitration fees.

Conclusion

Employee turnover is a common and inevitable phenomenon that can have significant impacts on an organization’s performance, productivity, and profitability. However, turnover can be reduced and managed by implementing effective strategies that address the root causes and consequences of employee departure. Going through the turnover reduction strategies we have shared, you’ll be able to retain your employees, improve your customer satisfaction, and steadily great towards your goals.

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Citations:

1. CNBC

2. businessinsider

3. CNBC