Rank salary highly at your own peril when auditing staff turnover

Staff turnover is a big challenge for many employers. And many believe that money is the major cause. Not true.

Studies show that job dissatisfaction and relationship at the office are the leading causes of employees leaving your company.

Employees ask themselves; am I satisfied? Am I using my skills? Am I challenged enough? Is there growth?

The reporting authorities — which could be the business owner, directors, managers or supervisors —play a big role in the above.

The work environment is related to the organisation’s culture. For example, if the organisation does not promote from inside, an individual will be forced to pursue better opportunities outside, in order to grow.

Staff turnover is healthy; you can never prevent people quitting and others joining. However, a high staff turnover places the organisation at a disadvantage.

The harmful effects include low morale for the staff left behind. They may feel that the organisation does not care or fear increased workload.

It is also a business risk to lose staff at a high rate. The HR cost of short listing, advertising, interviewing and inducting new staff and training increases operational costs.

For a staff retention strategy to work, it is important to appreciate that workers have to be treated well. Focus on three Rs: Respect, Recognition and Reward.

You will be amazed by how giving small unexpected rewards transforms your staff morale — and, therefore productivity.

Getting involved in your workers tasks, like meeting every week to discuss challenges they face is another good idea.

Ask questions like, what made your week hard or successful? How come you took so much time to handle a task?

What materials were wasted in the factory? This is not criminalising, but identifying functional issues that affect staff with a view to solving them.

Don’t ask, how can I get good staff? But, how can I make my staff better?

Business gets better when the people get better. Strive to teach your staff something new.

Training the new staff afresh is always a great idea. This can be both on technical as well as soft skills.

Soft skills training like on communication, customer care, and time management is important especially to staff who are new to the work place.

Employees who have problems at home, like a family loss, will tend to underperform at work; so pay attention and even hiring a counsellor will improve their performance.

Managers should also get leadership training, especially on people management skills.

Forward looking companies are also loaning or subsidising tuition fees (especially for professional courses) for employees to go back to school.

Underperformance and staff turnover can also be prevented at recruitment stage, by being picky.

The notion that people are your most important asset is wrong. Good people are your most important asset. Know the background of every applicant.

Pay disparities

For SMEs, hiring a consultant to take care of their human resource matters pays off, since they may not have a strong HR team internally.

Make sure the organisational structure and policies are clear and supportive of staff retention. This way you define expectations, and control behaviour, relationships at the workplace and their quality.

For pay, ensure there are no wide disparities among employees at the same level .

Mr Wainaina is a recruitment consultant with Corporate Staffing Services Ltd. [email protected]