While employees are worried about losing their job, employers are worried about keeping their best workers. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics June 2014 Report on Job Openings and Labor Turnover, there was a total of 55.7 million hires and 53.3 million separations from June 2013 to June 2014. Although there is still a net employment gain of 2.4 million, “many studies show that the total cost of losing an employee can range from tens of thousands of dollars to 1.5-2x annual salary.” When losing an employee, businesses aren’t only losing a worker, they’re losing money, time, productivity, etc. All these factors combined (and more), will have a great effect on the company, and can possibly set it back.
So how does a business retain their employees? Well first, the loss of critical staff members must be recognized and taken action upon. If there is a recent trend in the loss of employees, chances are that others in the same department are probably seeking new jobs as well. In order to combat this loss, data must be collected. Utilizing exit surveys, stay interviews, on-boarding studies, and recruitment studies are all great ways to understand what is going on in employees’ minds and to see what the company is excelling in and what it is lacking in. Once data is collected, the next step is to create a plan and enact it. If a plan isn’t put into action as soon as possible, employees may feel like they’ve been given an empty promise. So learn about what your employees need in order to make them feel like an important asset to the company. There is a strong link between employee turnover rate and job satisfaction!
Read about the SHRM Customized Benchmarking Database study on the trends of employee turnover rate in SHRM’s Executive Brief: Tracking Trends in Employee Turnover.
For more information on best practices, visit us at BE Recruiting.