Since it costs 4-5 times the annual salary of a worker to replace them in terms of recruitment, training costs, and lost workplace efficiency, it pays to give attention to loving the ones you're with. We often tell clients, "if you are not recruiting your own people, you are the only one who isn't." Staying close to your employees, listening to them, showing appreciation, and creating paths for upward mobility are all intensely important right now. Loyalty is earned. Having said that, if you have a toxic manager, now is the time to show them the door. Not dealing with chronic department discontent will be deadly when workplace alternatives are resplendent.
The most common reason by far given for leaving a job is "I found a better opportunity." What if you were offering your employees better opportunities every day in your own organization? They would not be leaving. This is not about money, it is about opportunity. It also is not just about upward mobility.
An employee said: "The only career path I saw was up — and up was in short supply. I felt stuck."
However, there are five career paths other than up. Do you know what they are and are you offering them to your employees? Just yesterday I spoke to a Medical Technologist who told me his manager doesn't want to help him get certified for fear he will leave. How short-sighted is that!
For years we have provided new hires with a free book during their third week on the job, Love It, Don't Leave It: 26 Ways to Get What You Want at Work, to help new hires take responsibility for their own job satisfaction. But the employer has a key role to play in retention and it doesn't take much.
If you don't have a retention strategy, I highly recommend the international bestseller now in its 6th edition: Love 'Em or Lose 'Em by retention experts Beverly Kaye and Sharon Jordan-Evans. This is the essential manual on getting good people to stay.
Managers will often say, "I'm already working harder than ever. I don't have time for this stuff."
Tell me – if you don't have time for this, how will you find time to recruit, interview, select, orient, and train your talented employees' replacements?
Rob Kurz is a Certified Employee Retention Specialist (CERS). KurzSolutions employs a sixteen-point retention plan.
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