3 potential causes of high employee turnover

People-iconsHigh employee turnover isn’t necessarily the disastrous state of affairs for your business that it is often said to be for many organisations. After all, your firm may be in an especially challenging sector where only those with a very particular set of core competencies really succeed.
However, there’s a very distinct difference between ‘positive attrition’ – poorly-performing workers leaving of their own accord or being sacked – and ‘negative attrition’, where an organisation’s best employees start to lack motivation and seek the exit door.
Here are three of the common causes of attrition that could be effectively costing your Irish company many thousands of pounds a year in lost productivity, revenue, recruitment and training costs.

1. Inadequate training

Past studies have revealed a pronounced tendency for those who receive poor job training to leave their roles in less than a year.
Sure, your firm may be under pressure to slim down its training programmes so that your new hires can get down to work quicker and start contributing to the bottom line. However, this could be harming your employees’ preparedness, confidence and ultimately, ability to do their job.
Many firms have negotiated this problem by extending the transitional period between training and the employee being expected to ably perform their duties on their own – for example, by boosting their on-site supervisor-to-employee ratio.

2. Poor leadership

Are your leaders setting the good example that you would want your lower-ranked employees to follow? If your firm’s management is a revolving door of new faces who seem to be in a perpetual ‘transitional period’, don’t be surprised if those at entry level decide to take the hint.
There’s a well-worn – but accurate – saying that employees leave managers rather than companies. You should therefore make sure you invest properly in your company’s leaders to help stabilise employee turnover.

3. Inaccurate job descriptions

Did you give your employees the wrong idea about what kind of work they would be doing for you even before they applied for your vacancy? Truthful and informative job profiles are key to keeping down employee turnover.
The next time you are writing a job description, check that it accurately outlines the staff member’s likely day-to-day duties, the hours that they will be expected to work, the flexibility that they will have and what opportunities they will have to progress.
After all, if you raise an especially promising candidate’s expectations to levels that are never met, or indeed leave an inexperienced employee with a much more challenging role than they were prepared for, how is your firm not going to suffer high employee turnover?
Heavy staff attrition doesn’t need to be inevitable – but avoiding it starts with hiring well. Contact Webrecruit Ireland today about an approach to recruitment online advertising that will draw the most suitable candidates while repelling those who do not fit your vacancy.

 



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