Staff turnover

WorkBuzz helps employers understand staff turnover and gather real-time feedback from employees to find ways to improve employee engagement.

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What is staff turnover?

Staff turnover is a term that is used to represent the number of people in a given workforce who leave a firm’s employment for any reason in a given period. It is also known as employee turnover. Staff turnover is relevant when an employee needs to be replaced. So, if someone retires but their job doesn’t need someone else to step into it from the current workforce or to be recruited from outside, then this comes under the staff attrition. Most companies measure their turnover rates over the course of a year but quarterly, monthly and even weekly indices are just as valid depending on the sector.

Why is the rate of staff turnover important to employers?

What can employers do to reduce their staff turnover rate?

What challenges does a high staff turnover rate present companies with?

How can WorkBuzz help companies to improve staff turnover rates?

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Why is the rate of staff turnover important to employers?

 

Staff turnover is important for a number of reasons. Firstly, businesses that have a high number of staff leaving will face higher recruitment costs since every person that leaves needs to be replaced. This means time, money and resources need to go into finding a suitable person. The more people leave, the more recruitment costs there will be to bear.

 

Conversely, knowing you have a relatively low rate of staff turnover with more people who are sticking with their jobs will often indicate lower recruitment costs need to be planned for. It will also often indicate that the workforce is happier, a good thing to know if you want to foster an inclusive and engaging workplace culture among employees.

 

Of course, people leave their jobs for a huge variety of reasons. Sometimes staff turnover might be down to factors outside of an employer’s direct control. Nevertheless, knowing the rate of staff turnover will help organisations to plan for the future, something that is important for all strategic decision-makers, not least those with a responsibility for human resources.

What challenges does a high staff turnover rate present companies with?

 

As mentioned, companies that have a higher than average rate of turnover among their staff can expect recruitment and retention costs to go up in the near future. This is especially so among businesses that require skilled workers. After all, it is more expensive to hire someone and pay them the going rate for their set of skills than to keep someone on board who already has the skills you need. Even worse, employing new staff may also mean there are associated training costs to take into consideration before they can be deployed to their maximum potential.

 

Even very good candidates can take a while to adjust to the way a firm operates. Again, this can impact companies as a cost in terms of their productivity. A company can soon build a reputation as one which isn’t looking after its employees well enough. Rival firms may try to headhunt your most talented employees as a result meaning the problem can spiral out of control. Any business that sees more than about 15 per cent of its workforce leaving in a given year is at risk of developing such a reputation within their sector. This can be destabilising, especially if senior and highly skilled employees choose to leave.

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What can employers do to reduce their staff turnover rate?

 

Paying employees more for their work is an obvious way to keep them on board but it is not the only thing that counts. Regular feedback sessions with managers can help to understand where the problems lie. This will give you more opportunities to fix the sort of things that make people consider leaving in the first place.

 

One of the most common reasons people give for leaving is that they can’t progress their career within an organisation so they seek opportunities elsewhere. Simply by ensuring there is a clear management pathway with career progression is a good way to help lower employee turnover rates. Sometimes, listening can be more effective than offering bonuses, extra days off or other inducements.

How can WorkBuzz help companies to improve their current staff turnover situation?

 

To help you understand why staff turnover rates are as they are, WorkBuzz’s platform can be deployed to ask an entire workforce what it thinks about its work en masse. This approach, with automated text analytics, will help you to pick up on the sorts of things people are talking about or thinking privately.

 

Our advanced anonymous feedback platform allows all employees to say what they think freely. Using artificial intelligence techniques, even the data gathered from very large workforces can be analysed and interpreted to help make business decisions that will end up with fewer people leaving, lower costs and better staff turnover statistics.

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