Can employee turnover be prevented?

Everything has a solution; it is not immediate or easy, and it requires effort.

Can employee turnover be avoided? First of all, you cannot prevent turnover. This is one of the most frequent requests we receive: people are always seeking a magic solution for those ungrateful employees who leave after a tireless, ongoing recruitment process. This is especially true at the operational level, where our recruiters go out in sun and shade, through mud, water, dirt and all kinds of vegetation, into nearby villages, neighborhoods and ranches to find candidates to fill operational vacancies. The difference compared with administrative recruitment is enormous.

After sweating buckets and working ourselves to the bone to bring people aboard in pursuit of our objectives, we provide onboarding—which also takes time—uniforms, paperwork, insurance registration, medical examinations, drug tests, signatures, signatures and more signatures. Finally, when our new recruit is ready to start, freshly trained and looking sharp: “I’m going to the restroom.” We never see them again. Gone, vanished, escaped, resigned without even saying “Excuse me, and thank you.” This is the never-ending story of your company’s esteemed HR department, which has become nothing more than a recruitment department because it can no longer keep up with filling the vacancies.

Well, dear reader, everything has a solution. It is neither immediate nor easy, and it takes effort. But you have two choices: start at the root, or keep spending 60% of your time recruiting, interviewing, hiring, dismissing and repeating the cycle.

It all begins with how people are treated; it all begins with belonging. Did you know that one of the leading causes of stress and suicide worldwide is unemployment? Let us start there. Think about the little hell that employee was living through when you finally arrived with a job offer. How did they feel? Do you understand the frustration, or how miserable they might feel because of it? In some cases, how unmanly they might feel, how useless? But then you arrived with a wonderful proposal. When the person accepts, they arrive stressed and tense, carrying the emotional burden of their recent unemployment. However hard you try to give them a warm welcome and that wonderful induction—which we often have not even properly focused—when we finally release them into operations, someone else (e.g., a supervisor, manager or coordinator) immediately speaks harshly to them, cracks the whip, points the way and says, “Come on, get to work!” Our little moth immediately feels threatened and belittled, and decides it is better to flee the situation. And this is a vicious circle.

Reducing staff turnover is an extensive topic we will explore gradually. For now, we want to share a couple of keys to begin addressing it:

Be sure to have a good wage and benefits offer

You need not be the highest-paying employer, but research the market average. Paying slightly more is preferable if staff are satisfied at least financially.

Create a career plan and communicate it

from the welcome and onboarding, explain how employees can become directors. Show them the yellow brick road, the crown jewels. Be proud of your company: people will feel that pride and begin with the same ambition.

Improving the work climate

YES, you need to assess the workplace climate. What do people feel, how do they live, what do they want, what are their fears, what do they think of management and the head of HR? All the information is there: go out, find it and analyze it. If you do not listen to your staff, we are in trouble.

Align your job profiles with the people holding the positions

It is very common to hire people simply to fill a vacancy. Fine—but do they really have the competencies? Are they at least physically suited to the job? Dear reader, a large proportion of people leave because they feel frustrated that they cannot do their work, and prefer to leave before being fired. If your job profiles are woefully inadequate, we need to start there.

Emotional wage

Yes, yes, a fashionable and overused concept today. But why not work on it? Remembering the great Maslow, we all love belonging, feeling part of something, being recognized and heard, having room for creativity and not having everything revolve around work. Try it! You will remember me when you see people's reaction.

Create Synergies

Everything is a battle, a race or a constant struggle. Bring people together, encourage teamwork and help them know and recognize one another. Use team-building activities and create interdepartmental groups for problem-solving and improvement. This is like a family: would you like your children not to speak to one another and to hate each other? The same applies in your company.

Establish clear indicators and feedback

Work should not be meaningless. People need to know their objective and the value their work brings to the company and the world. Communicate and provide constant feedback: How are you? How do you feel? What do you need? How can I help? What would you like to learn? What do you want in life? This is an inherent responsibility of direct managers. If they are not doing it, we have a leadership issue.

It's all about LOVE

And no, it does not mean we all hug. Dear readers, it means understanding what moves people, how to win them over and how to inspire passion in every action and activity. It means helping them put their soul into work, large or small, and understand that the detail they are responsible for is vital to Mexican families and society. If even you do not understand this mission, we need to talk.

We could spend hours discussing strategies and tactics to reduce employee turnover. However, I wanted to share eight key points you can start working on in the short term. If you work in HR or handle this responsibility in your company, everything starts with understanding that you work with people. The era when everything was about numbers, invoices, sales, waste reduction, percentages, quality and so on no longer works for us. Unless you rethink work as a human being working for human beings, turnover will remain your Achilles' heel.

Stay alert!

Can employee turnover be prevented?

Can employee turnover be prevented?

Everything has a solution; it is not immediate or easy, and it requires effort.

Reducing staff turnover is an extensive topic we will explore gradually. For now, we want to share a couple of keys to begin addressing it: