When your organization is stuck in an endless loop of employees leaving and employees coming on board, it’s easy to spend so much time keeping enough hands on deck that you lose sight of what this work signifies: increased turnover. It’s a red flag for you as a manager when employees are seeking greener pastures. If you want to improve your attrition numbers, it’s important to know why your employees are leaving. Getting to the bottom of this means soliciting some hard truths from your employees both before and as they are leaving.
Evaluations: A Real Two-Way Street
No one likes employee evaluations, but if you use them to both guide employees and gauge your organization, they can be less of a nuisance for everyone. Allowing employees time to discuss their concerns and suggestions for improvement during their evaluations not only gives them some buy-in, it also gives you a way to break the ice and make evaluations easier. However, plan to do more with this concession; if you’re just smiling and nodding when employees tell you what needs improvement, they’ll know it, and it won’t do anything to stem turnover.
Survey Says…
Many employees are leery of expressing their true feelings about management or the organization as a whole during a face-to-face meeting, which is why anonymous surveys are a good way to solicit information from your employees. Online survey tools offer a great platform for publishing and distributing surveys to employees. But again, the important aspect of online surveys is how you use them. Surveying employees, yet doing nothing to acknowledge or address their concerns, will gain you nothing but distrust from your employees.
On the Way Out
For the no-holds-barred employee take on what’s wrong with your organization, there’s nothing better than the exit interview. Employees who are leaving are often willing to give you frank information about why they are leaving, be it for better pay, more growth opportunities or even more cooperative management. The key to the successful exit interview, however, is striking the right tone; treat your now-former employee as an equal, and resist the urge to be argumentative or dismissive.
Even when you dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s in your effort to retain great employees, you’ll still have hiring needs. Make the hiring process less of a time drain — add Staffing Partners to your recruiting team. They’ve got the best temporary and temp-to-hire employees in your industry, so do yourself a favor and call them today!
