Staff turnover can be damaging to your organization, and you can only tackle this problem by identifying and changing its main causes. Below are a few strategies you can use to gather data on why your employees are leaving.
Conduct exit interviews
A properly conducted exit interview can yield a goldmine of information to help reduce future turnover. To get the most value from this conversation, you need to ensure departing employees feel free to disclose their real reasons for leaving. Problems with managers are a common reason for employees leaving — thus the truism, “People don’t quit jobs, they quit managers” — so it’s always better to have the exit interview conducted by someone who didn’t directly supervise the employee. It’s also useful to interview consultants and contractors at the end of their tenure; they often witness problems while inside an organization.
Survey current employees
The people who currently work for you are experts on the factors most likely to lead to future turnover in your organization. If you can create a forum in which your employees feel safe to express their full opinions, you’ll get access to a lot of the information you need. Anonymous surveys through platforms such as your Achievers instance or Survey Monkey are one good way to assure employees that their criticisms won’t be held against them. Another excellent method of discovering problem areas is to hire an outside consultant to come in and interview employees, alone and in groups.
Read employee reviews of your workplace
Sites such as Glassdoor offer current and past employees the opportunity to review their experience working for your organization. Reading through these honest appraisals is a good way to find out what your employees really think.
Gather the right data
To strategically change your company’s policies, you need to go beyond employee input and make an effort to gather data from the larger marketplace. Here are a few examples.
Salary
If employees are leaving for better pay or benefits, exactly how much more are other companies offering?
Benefits
Are there essential perks or benefits your employees are chasing, such as better maternity/paternity leave, or better health benefits?
Schedule flexibility
What type of flextime or remote work opportunities do your competitors offer? What percentage of their workforce has access to these perks?
Company culture
Data can be qualitative as well as quantitative. Are you losing workers to a company that makes them feel more appreciated? Read your competitors’ job postings to see how they present their employer brand, and also read their Glassdoor reviews.
Your employees want you to know how they feel. If you create a safe channel for them to share this information, you can build a strong culture of staff loyalty and reduce the disruption of workforce churn.
