To Cut Turnover, Survey Results & Benchmarks Don’t Matter

April 1, 2024
Richard Finnegan
Articles

We sometimes say our approach to cutting turnover is counter-intuitive, meaning we don’t do things others would expect us to do. Let’s call those others “traditionalists”, those who’ve always done the same things over and over because that’s what they’ve been taught to do. Or they do what’s commonly called “best practices”, things they hear about or read about that some other company did.

Our approach at its core is that leaders on every level are employee turnover’s greatest influencers. And Gallup would tell you the same regarding employee engagement. The result is that most employees’ stay/leave decisions are based on everyday work…and the dominant influence over how employees see their daily work is their boss.

Most would profoundly agree…or passively nod their heads…to what is above. Yet they continue to do what other companies do, all without considering that others “best practices” hardly ever including improving each supervisor’s relationships with their employees.

As just two examples, increasing pay or adding a benefit does nothing to improve an employee’s relationship with her manager. Neither does improving new-hire onboarding. This mini-analysis starts a very long list of things companies do with full belief that those things will cut their turnover…but they will hardly make their turnover budge. So let’s dig deeper into what doesn’t cut turnover.

Exit Surveys Don’t Cut Turnover

Each year at the SHRM annual conference, I poll the audience as to how many believe their company’s conducting exit surveys had resulted in reducing their turnover. The standard response is less than five percent saying “yes” and about 95 percent saying “no”. But I would bet you twenty bucks that all of those who had just pronounced their exit surveys as worthless have since returned to their jobs and continued to conduct exit interviews.

Exit interviews fail to provide an entry point for cutting turnover for bunches of reasons but here are the top three:

Employees don’t tell the truth.
HR accepts responses like “better opportunity” which provides no help for finding solutions…and many translate “better opportunity” to mean more pay.
No one acts on exit survey results anyhow.

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Further reading: Exit Interviews – More Like Autopsies or Toe Tags?

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Neither Do Engagement Surveys

Whether conducted annually or more often, engagement surveys are targeted toward generating one-size-fits-all programs by way of HR or an employee committee that develops a resulting action plan for improvement. Survey says employees want more recognition? Committee meets three times and reports their plan for more employee recognition events and better service awards. Or for better communication we will have CEO videos and town hall meetings. Need career development? HR makes “career ladders” and emphasizes all of the training classes available. And tuition reimbursement is our associated employee benefit.

What’s missing? Nothing about first-line leaders.

Contrasting the above paragraph against first-line leaders having the greatest clout to improve turnover, one must consider these engagement survey questions:

Does your employee survey provide data for first-line leaders who are the key drivers of employee retention? Or just for those leaders above them?
How many items on the survey inquire about first-line leaders building trust vs pay, benefits, and other things?
Does anyone in your company remember a first-line leader’s engagement score year-to-year?
Has a first-line leader ever been fired because he couldn’t improve his lousy employee engagement score?

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Further reading: Yes or No: Do Engagement Surveys Cut Turnover?

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Nor Do Turnover Benchmarks

CEOs often ask for external-company benchmarks so they know if their turnover percentage is something to worry about. So large-company HR departments search online or pay for benchmark data while small-company HR leaders call their local competitors for talent. The outcome is usually expressed like this:

Whereas our turnover is __%, the benchmark for other companies is __%

so we are doing (better or worse)

If the data says we are doing better, we now have an excuse to not try harder…and therefore not hold first-line leaders accountable for keeping their teams. If the data says we are worse, we can either invent a reason why like “it gets colder where we are” or whatever, or we can tell HR to fix it.

The worst thing about external turnover benchmarks is that they freeze our progress. The implication is if other companies can’t figure this out then we can’t either…so being about the same means this is the best we can do.

Some Inside Scoop

C-Suite Analytics has built its reputation by helping companies cut turnover by 20% and more, consistently over the thirteen years we’ve been in business. Our consultants know explicitly how to follow our implementation model which is here:

We can describe the inspiration-driving benefits of converting turnover to dollars and helping executives develop employee retention goals. We’ve seen firsthand the career-improving results of first-line managers conducting Stay Interviews to both improve their retention and help those leaders build better careers. And we know asking those same first-line leaders to forecast how long each employee wills stay leads them to listen more carefully and watch for retention-indicating signs.

We know most, though, that holding first-line leaders accountable to achieving retention goals is the most powerful retention fix. And no part of exit surveys, engagement surveys, or turnover benchmark data plays any role in helping those first-line leaders cut their turnover.

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