The common belief is that the employees quitting during “The Great Resignation” are young and don’t make much money, so replacing their meager incomes is easily done. Two reports throw a heavy wrench into the assumption that the majority of quits are entry-level workers.
Two years ago, at SHRM21, I gave a presentation called Seven Proofs That Managers Drive Engagement & Retention, Not HR. It was clear then that there was a disconnect between what research tells us and what we do to improve retention. I’m revisiting my notes from that event to see how far retention efforts have come in two years.
The highly-respected Gallagher 2023 Workforce Trends Report survey of 4,000+ organizations says that employee retention remains priority #1. Not only did 66% of HR executives say so, but more than half of operations executives did as well. So businesses who must get product out the door now see turnover as their main obstacle, just as nurse turnover drives patient-care shortcomings and ever-increasing agency costs.
Employee engagement directly impacts productivity far more than pay, benefits, and other compensations. However, most employee engagement conversations are centered on survey scores because scores are tangible. But engagement is more than just a number, and one day of data isn’t enough metric to measure it effectively.
The forced work-from-home in 2020 and 2021 has led to two immediately-recognizable acronyms: WFH for work-from-home and RTO for return-to-office. From the employee side, WFH represents options. For employers, the combination of WFH + RTO = higher turnover, worse recruiting, and for-certain-resulting lower productivity.
Four-day workweeks feel trendy, almost fad-like, but data shows its popular with employees. On the company side, data suggests work satisfaction and productivity is up, recruiting is easier…and turnover is down. And during these days of extreme workforce shortages, every company is seeking a recruiting edge. Could this be “it”?
The Wall Street Journal recently did a deep dive into the benefits of hiring older workers as right now people 55 and older are the fastest-growing segment of our workforce according to federal data. WSJ went on to profile older workers on why they are choosing to keep working.
Right now, people 55 and older are the fastest-growing segment of our workforce according to federal data. We should leave past assumptions and biases behind us, like everyone quits at 65, and focus on this recruiting opportunity, whereby some of the very best workers are in fact coming back to the workforce and are available to us.
Part of calculating the monetary cost of turnover for your retention efforts includes placing a dollar value on lost productivity, which is more complex, but more important than many of the direct costs we usually think of when we lose employees.
If we can safely presume high pay equals most essential then there are at least 11 jobs in healthcare that are more important to retain than nurses who traditionally have a high rate of turnover. Yet the higher-paid workers almost never receive a Stay Interview or an assessment of their likelihood to stay.