Comparing Turnover Percents

In his terrific book, “Good to Great," Jim Collins warns against comparing one company’s metrics against another’s because it is easy to justify one’s own mediocre performance if it is the same or better than an average competitor. This great advice really hits home when comparing turnover numbers for several reasons. One is that companies tend to report turnover in different ways, but more importantly it can be soothing to know that your turnover is the same or a little better than a competitor’s when the raw data tells you that your are losing half or more of your staff each year. That’s bad news no matter how much worse your competitors are. These benchmark comparisons also lead to the obvious excuses that stop improvement actions like “We’re doing better than ___ so we must be doing OK”. The implication is that there are no solutions available…and there are.

Employee Retention Tip of the Month

Retention Tip #17: Hire Older Workers

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has determined that the older a worker is when starting a job, the longer the employee will stay. So whereas this might bring grey hairs to mind, it also means that 30-somethings stay longer than 20-somethings. Consider age when hiring workers, especially if you work in the service industry and hire call center agents, waiters or waitresses, hosts or receptionists. And, ask yourself this. Can you increase your employee retention by hiring workers who know what they like to do, have bills to pay and are more stable in their lives?

The Power of Stay Interviews

We believe Stay Interviews are far more important than exit interviews. With our clients, Stay Interviews are conducted by firstline supervisors rather than HR so these supervisors hear in-person and with no filters why each individual team member stays. Once these supervisors are trained to ask pre-formed questions and then probe, they learn actionable things they can do that are important to employees…and therefore help them to stay.

The training sessions include role plays where we ask supervisors to “play themselves” rather than play pre-assigned roles. In a recent session, a food service supervisor said she was interested in learning more about computers and about international foods. The entire group then brainstormed ways that supervisor’s manager could fulfill this wish and came up with the following ideas: teach her to save international food websites in her “favorites”; send her international food articles online; suggest international dishes for company functions; buy her an international foods magazine subscription; give her an international foods book on her next service anniversary.

This example makes the power of Stay Interviews clear, both for retention and engagement. Solving many employees’ needs is easy if we ask and learn what they are.