Our Ultimate Guide To Reduce Employee Turnover and Increase Retention

employee turnover and retention

The Most Comprehensive Guide to Strategically Lower Employee Turnover and Improve HR Practices for Retention

We spent time looking into the statistics of turnover in our prior post.  We also spent a good deal of time on the fact that some types of turnover are good.  Then we helped you to understand the best way to determine your true turnover rates.  Finally, we provided you with a well cited and detailed turnover calculator to figure out exactly what turnover is costing you and your organization.  Now, we are diving into the real brass tacks:  How can I reduce and eliminate turnover? This will be done in a series of strategic posts that will help you to hone in on the real-word practical solutions to turnover that you have been looking for your whole career.

Explore Our Ultimate Guide To Employee Turnover

And find the right answers to your questions and then utilize the amazing strategies from our experts.  We are confident you will find the solutions to all of your problems.

Table of Contents:

 

Main Causes of Turnover and Institutional Knowledge Loss

 

Reasons Employers THINK Employees Leave

 

The Real Reasons Employees Actually Leave

 

Stop Turnover Before it Starts - Recruit the Right Person for the Right Job

 

Get Onboarding Right and Turnover Will Reduce Itself

 

Offer Pay that Keeps Up with the Market to Avoid Bad Turnover

 

Craft Benefit Plans That Attract Good Employees and Work Against Turnover

 

Create a Company Culture On Purpose

 

Build Teams & Company Unity That Will Prevent Turnover  

 

Transparency is Key to Superpower Employee Retention and Reduce Turnover

 

The Trust Gap Problem That Is Causing Your Turnover

 

Don’t Let a Toxic Workplace Spread Into Turnover

 

Be the Boss You Want to Have and Reduce Turnover

 

Empowering Employees Will Lower Turnover

 

Recognize Good Employees and Reward Good Behavior

 

Make Work-Life Balance a Real Thing In Order to Stave Off Turnover

 

Make Your Workplace Flexible

 

Employee Engagement Matters...A Lot

 

Performance Management Is an Everyday Thing That Can Reduce Turnover

 

Be Purposeful About Succession and Career Pathing to Lower Turnover Rates

 

Encourage Professional AND Personal Development To Raise Retention

 

Personal Development… At Work?

 

Provide Training On Interpersonal Skills To Stop Turnover From Pervading

 

Do Exit Interviews To Reverse Turnover

          

Do Stay Interviews and Stop Turnover In Its Tracks

 

Put on your seatbelt, because our team of experts has been developing professional human resources competency for more than 100 years altogether.  We are going to give you the ultimate guide with real strategies that will allow you to bring turnover to a halt. 

Why Worry About How to Reduce Employee Turnover?

Employee turnover is expensive. Various studies estimate the cost of replacing an employee to be anywhere from 50% to 200% of that employee's annual salary. This includes the costs of recruiting, interviewing, hiring, onboarding and training a new employee, as well as lost productivity while the role remains vacant. High turnover also causes the loss of organizational knowledge and experience, disrupts continuity, and can lower morale for remaining employees who have to pick up the slack. Reducing turnover has a direct positive impact on a company's bottom line.

In addition to the financial costs, employee turnover negatively impacts a company's culture and ability to build institutional knowledge. Relationships and rapport between team members are lost when someone leaves. Experienced employees take their knowledge with them, including information about customers, vendors, processes and why decisions were made. A revolving door of employees hinders a company's ability to learn from experiences over time. Stability in the workforce provides time to perfect processes, improve products and services based on feedback, and leverage what has worked well.

When employees leave, their institutional knowledge leaves with them.

Some examples of lost knowledge include:

  • Knowledge of key contacts such as vendors, partners and clients
  • Understanding of company systems, software, processes and infrastructure
  • Awareness of why past decisions were made
  • Familiarity with day-to-day responsibilities and tasks
  • Historical interactions with various teams or departments
  • Access to past communications, data or documents

Encouragement for Leaders

Now is the time for decisive action to engage your people for the long haul.

Losing top talent to "greener pastures" saps company knowledge, productivity and culture. Recruiting and onboarding replacements strains time and budgets. Yet quick fixes like across-the-board raises temporarily mask deeper issues driving turnover.

The hard truth? Retention starts from within. Analyze your culture honestly - do employees feel valued, trusted, heard? Do leaders model empathy, integrity and work-life balance? Or does overwork and favoritism spread?

Probe for root causes of resignations. Compensation often tops the list, but dig deeper. Do exit interviews reveal poor management, lack of recognition or unhealthy team dynamics? Preventable turnover indicates areas needing change.

Cultures thriving on collaboration and transparency retain innovation and experience. Employees give their all when they feel cared for holistically, not just regarded as “resources.”

As an organization’s heartbeat, you set the tone. Double down on onboarding new hires effectively and celebrating tenured employees. Keep listening and taking action on engagement survey feedback. Lead with the wisdom that businesses don’t succeed - people do.

The cost of inaction is continual talent bleed. But united in purpose, engaged teams transform companies. They propel competitive advantage that no competitor can replicate.

Take pride in the privilege you have to steward an environment where all employees reach their potential. The dividends to your culture and bottom line will astound you.