5 Reasons for High Turnover Rates and Tips for Prevention

What has changed for your organization since the beginning of 2020? Now more than ever, employers must be more empathetic, flexible, and transparent as the workforce navigates through this sudden work-life blend reality.

An article from The Atlantic shares that when the pandemic is officially over, one in six workers is projected to continue working from home or co-working at least two days a week. Another survey conducted by Upwork found that one-fifth of the workforce could be entirely remote after the pandemic. What do these statistics mean for your organization, and how do you plan to adapt?

5 Common (but Fixable) Causes of Employee Turnover

With so much change in the workforce, a strong company culture helps employees feel grounded and secure. Company culture and employee engagement are critical for increasing productivity, reducing employee turnover, and retaining key customers. Gone are the days when talented employees left solely because of pay. Study after study shows that many factors contribute to employee turnover

Below are just five reasons for high turnover rates and strategies for prevention.

1. Company Confidence

People on a journey want a clear picture of their final destination so they know where they are headed. They want a vision. It’s important that you provide a detailed road map of that vision to provide your people with a strong sense of purpose.

• Once you define your vision, communicate it frequently — more often than you think you should — to ensure your message is heard. Communicate that vision at weekly team meetings, off-sites, new employee onboarding, the launch of new products, and the celebrations of success.
  
  
• Recognize the importance of two-way communication by asking for their personal vision and really listening.

2. Feedback/Recognition

Human beings need validation. They need to know that they are heard, seen, and feel that they matter. Recognize the people that work for you for their hard work, their contribution to your team, and their contribution to the company. Determine what success looks like for each of your employees and think about the behaviors you want to see more of. Then, when you see those behaviors, recognize and celebrate individual contributors.

3. Learning and Development

There are three basic human needs that must be met for a person to feel engaged:

• Autonomy
• Purpose
• Mastery

Actively seek ways to identify where you can give someone information or develop their skills in order to be able to work more autonomously, feel more purposeful in their work, and master their job. Consider asking each person who reports to you what they want to learn or where they would like to develop their skills. Work together to determine the best opportunities to do that. You can find recorded webinars, TedTalks, and blogs that will feed those hungry for development at little to no cost to the company.

4. Leadership

It's human nature to seek information, and no one likes working in the dark. Not surprisingly, research shows that employee engagement thrives with transparency from the top. The more transparency, the higher the employee engagement.

• Seek every opportunity to share information with your employees.
  
  
• Rather than preparing regular presentations or information pushes, one of the best ways to build a more transparent workplace and make people feel informed is to schedule quarterly townhall meeting, opening the floor to any questions asked, with nothing off-limits.
  
  
• Allow people to send in questions in advance and assure them that you won't be identifying who asked which question or suggested a topic unless it's something where they may be looking for input from the group.

5. Company Culture

Culture is powerful, and like brand, you’re going to have one whether you like it or not. The best organizations to work for are the ones that recognize this and actively strive to push the right buttons every day to build a culture of engagement.

How Can High Turnover Rates be Avoided?

Having strong employee engagement doesn't mean that your employees feel happy all the time — although strong engagement does increase the overall level of happiness and morale. Rather it means that employees feel as though they have a stake in the game and a sense of purpose. They know what they're playing for and what they will win, and they are willing to give their work everything they’ve got to achieve that success.

Hire the right people, prioritize communication and feedback, pay attention to employee engagement, and offer flexibility in our changing world — that's how high turnover rates can be avoided.