BOO! Here’s How You Might Be Scaring Off Employees

One trillion dollars.

$1,000,000,000,000.

That’s 12 zeroes. One thousand billion. One million million.

And it’s what U.S. businesses are losing every year due to voluntary turnover.

Yikes!

Things get even scarier when you look at the statistics for an individual organization like yours:

• 1.5 to 2 times annual salary: A conservative cost estimate for replacing an individual employee.
• $660,000 to $2.6 million per year: Using Bureau of Labor turnover statistics, a 100-person organization providing an average salary of $50,000 could incur turnover and replacement costs in this range.

Turnover is an expensive problem. In addition to the costs of replacing an employee, an unplanned departure also creates stress on remaining team members and can contribute to increased mistakes, poor morale, missed deadlines, opportunity costs, knowledge loss and more.

Perhaps the most frightening part of all is that you might be scaring off your very best employees! Here are a few things employers do that drive good people away:

• Overworking employees. Every business gets busy, but regularly heaping too much work on workers’ plates is a recipe for decreased job satisfaction, stress and burnout – which may prompt employees to jump ship.
• Playing favorites. While it’s logical to recognize and reward individuals who do great work, consistently giving preferential treatment to a chosen few is a surefire way to alienate other staff members. This disengagement could cause people to look for better opportunities elsewhere.
• Ignoring culture problems. Inadequate training, lack of time and resources, poor management and more can all contribute to a toxic culture – and turning a blind eye to the problem only fuels the fire. As we stated in this earlier post on workplace culture, failing to address culture issues creates a downward spiral that drains productivity, destroys morale and drives A-players out the door.
• Micromanagement. Do managers in your organization hover, nitpick and inadvertently stifle employees? As you can imagine, nobody wants to work for a micromanager. In this post, we explain how to spot micromanagement and loosen the reins a bit to quash voluntary turnover.
• Lack of opportunity. When employees are bored at work, lack challenge or have no clear plan for advancement, they feel stuck. While slackers and average employees might not mind doing the same thing week in and week out, high performers crave novelty, new opportunities for learning and a well-defined career path. And if you fail to provide those, your competitors will be more than happy to steal your best employees right out from under you.

Looking for tips to tame turnover?

Check out these additional resources from PrideStaff:

How to Keep Turnover from Turning You Over

Three Ways to Reduce Your Employee Turnover

Are You Getting Burned? Time for some career sunscreen…

Do You Have a Chief Retention Officer?

Stop the revolving door by providing the right staffing support.

PrideStaff provides flexible workforce solutions that help prevent burnout, facilitate greater work/life satisfaction and free your core team to work on important, challenging projects. Ready to prevent turnover? Contact your local PrideStaff office today to learn more.