Don’t Do This! Bad Examples of Waiving the White Flag on Turnover

When problems come we can either duck to avoid them or prepare and fix them. Understandable when a tornado is coming to run for shelter, but when a serious business problem is approaching, we often bring our best minds together over a jug of coffee and try to whiteboard our way out of it. Either way, we are still not making real changes to improve outcomes.

Two Bad Examples of Ducking Turnover

Recently I’ve seen two examples of organizations essentially avoiding fixing turnover by saying that increased turnover is unavoidable and then proposing work-around plans that are not proven. In fact these examples are from entire industries saying there is no fix for turnover.

The first “do not do” approach comes from a lead article in the Supply Chain Management Review, with the title Why Chief Supply Chain Officers Should Embrace Employee Turnover.[i] The author represents Gartner, a national-leading consulting firm, who cites their own data that turnover is likely to increase in the next five years. She goes on to say that “turnover is inevitable and it’s better to accept this fact, embrace it and turn it to your advantage.” Her advantage methods include conducting career counseling for opportunities both inside and outside of the organization, and then she cites that too often companies risk retaining disengaged employees with their overall efforts to retain their entire teams.

My gut reaction is you are coaching your productive employees to leave your organization and how will you replace them given our fast-increasing workforce challenges. As to her second idea, my suggestion is you should be coaching your disengaged employees and then take steps to fire them if necessary.

The second “do not do” approach comes from a keynote speaker at a national nursing conference I attended in April. Her pitch to the audience of nurse leaders was that nurse turnover is inevitable so find new ideas to work-around it. Coincidentally, this is a keynote speaker who has quoted my work extensively in her books, so this was completely counter-intuitive to those references. And, if she had attended the exceptional presentation at the same conference by Linda M. Valentino DNP, RN, NEA-BC, Stay Interviews & Human Centered Leadership: A Winning RN Retention Duo, she would have learned that Mt. Sinai West didn’t work-around nurse turnover, they solved for it and cut it by 43%.

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Further Viewing: Mount Sinai West’s Linda Valentino & Stay Interviews for Nurse Retention

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Is High Turnover Inevitable?

These things are true:

• Turnover is generally higher than we would want
• Our workforce shortage will get worse, not better
• Therefore the easy conclusion is turnover will get worse as well

If you were the above-cited author or the keynote speaker, you obviously believe that turnover cannot be fixed. But it’s not true that there is no solution to reduce employee turnover.

Do This! An Example of Cutting Turnover Versus Working Around It

When speaking at the SHRM annual conference in Chicago last month, a gentleman asked from the back of the room whether the retention tactics I described can work with non-profits. This is an insightful question because those who work in non-profits are more tied to their organization’s mission than their pay which is usually less than for a similar job in a for-profit company.

In that same room was Cliff Reyle, an executive with Youth Villages which has a total of 4,000 employees who provide emotional health services to young people who need them. Youth Villages is a client of ours and we are working to improve retention among their live-in residential counselors, the toughest group to retain. So in a room with about 600 folks I turned to Cliff to ask how much turnover had come down, to which Cliff replied “35 percent”…against an original goal to reduce turnover by 20 percent.

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Further Reading: Message at SHRM24: Stay Interviews Require Accountability

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In addition to reducing their turnover this much, Cliff told me how they are performing on their new-hire goal, as so often reducing new-hire turnover improves retention for all jobs over time. With a goal to retain 80 percent of new hires for their first 90 days, new-hire retention has improved to the following:

• 94% 90-day retention
• 88% 6-month retention
• 75% one-year retention

I would add that few who are reading this have a job that is as difficult to solve retention for as live-in residential counselors for challenged youth. But either way, Cliff and his team didn’t surrender to an inevitable fate to work-around, they took charge and did something about it.

You CAN Cut Employee Turnover

Those who read this column regularly know what comes next. That our research-based solution does indeed cut employee turnover…and it involves (1) converting turnover to dollars, (2) establishing retention goals, (3) training leaders to conduct Stay Interviews so they can build 1-1 stay plans with each member of their teams, (4) asking those leaders to also forecast how long each employee will stay, and (5) holding those leaders accountable to their goals and their forecasts.

Our method is based on research versus being whimsical or a combination of “best practices”. Yes, there is work and a dedicated effort to making these changes within your organization, but the results are significant and sustainable compared to a hands-in-the-air surrender with no proven solution or value.

Please email me if you’d like to learn more at dfinnegan@c-suiteanalytics.com.

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Based on Dick Finnegan’s ground-breaking work with Stay Interviews and Finnegan’s Arrow, our expert facilitators will equip you with all the tools you need to refine and implement your retention strategies to build a thriving, engaged workplace culture. Secure your spot today!

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[i] https://www.scmr.com/article/why-chief-supply-chain-officers-embrace-employee-turnover?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=TWISC&oly_enc_id=3458C7955823G5X