Employee Turnover – Not Always a Bad Thing
As a follow-up to the blog posted a few weeks ago by Jim Prokes, I would like to return to the topic of employee turnover. In a whitepaper published by PayScale, some of the common myths about turnover are addressed:
- Measuring Turnover Isn’t That Important
- Low Turnover Is Always Good
- Turnover Is Always Bad
- You Can’t Control Turnover
Here are a few of the important thoughts I took away after reading the whitepaper.
- No one is irreplaceable but employees are not expendable.
- Low employee turnover is not always good. Some employees stay because they realize they have a good thing – maybe they are overpaid, under-skilled, lack motivation or know that their bad behavior will not be tolerated elsewhere. Others recognize that economically the time is not right to make a move.
- Turnover may be a good thing. It allows employers to reassess their organization and select, place and develop employees who are enthusiastic about the company and the direction it is heading.
- While an employer cannot control turnover 100%, employers can create a culture that encourages the best employees to stay. It may take work on the part of the employer but it can be done and statistics show that companies that intentionally manage their cultures significantly outperform those that don’t.
Turnover is not just a simple number… as the saying goes, “It’s all in the details.” Company executives need to examine who is leaving – was this person an asset or a liability? If the organization just lost a valuable employee, take a hard look at changes that need to be made and what can be done going forward to prevent other valuable employees from leaving because people are not expendable!
