How do people who leave impact on your overall productivity?

In our region at the moment, recruitment is seemingly a big challenge for many companies.  Finding the right people for certain roles is something that many of our clients have been sharing is causing them the biggest headache.

In our region at the moment, recruitment is seemingly a big challenge for many companies.  Finding the right people for certain roles is something that many of our clients have been sharing is causing them the biggest headache.

So, retention has never been more important.  We cannot afford to lose our talent, particularly those who we know would have a big impact if they were to leave.

We were interested in some research last month by McKinsey and Company looking at employers not really understanding why talent leaves.  When we hear people talk about losing their talent, they will often tell us, “Well, they got the opportunity for more money” or “They needed a change and got the option for a better job” or “The new company could offer more development opportunities”.  The report by McKinsey and Company highlights perfectly, that this is exactly what they found and that this is not the reason why people leave.  Their research found that people that leave sighted other elements that were far more important: –

• A sense of belonging
• Feeling valued by their manager
• Feeling valued by the organisation
• Having a team that cares about them
• The potential to advance their career with the company
• Flexibility

This resonates with Pro-Development, as when we undertake employee engagement surveys, it is these areas that are highlighted as important to engagement, and it is rarely about more money.

So, how does this all affect productivity?  If you’ve read other blogs of ours over the years, you will know that the engagement of employees has a significant impact on productivity.  When employees are more engaged, we see the following improvements: –

• Lower levels of sickness
• Improved advocacy of both customers and employees
• Higher levels of customer satisfaction
• Less turnover of staff
• Improved creativity and innovation
• Overall productivity and profit

We often ask businesses to think about the impact that losing talent would have on their business.  Rarely do business consider the whole picture when they lose great people, for instance: –

• Time taken to recruit new people and manage turnover of staff
• Onboarding and training of new people takes time
• Time on exit of the talent
• Juggling workloads to accommodate staff shortages
• Loss of expertise
• Change always brings with it new challenges which impacts on our productivity
• Potential issues around quality/customer satisfaction and speed/timeliness as new people come on board

What’s really concerning is the costs associated with replacing people.  Hay Group estimated it can cost between 12-18 months’ salary to replace an employee!  So, ultimately, all of this has a real impact on productivity and the bottom line.

Here’s just 5 suggestions from us on what you can do to retain your talent and improve your productivity: –

• Understand what engages your people and do more of that
• Understand what is getting in people’s way and create plans to address this
• Identify who are the biggest risks in your business if they left and develop a plan
• Make time to understand people’s aspirations and develop them to achieve these
• Ask people what is it that encourages them to stay. Perhaps ask them, what do they need to feel valued at work. (Make sure you listen to understand!)

So, if you can’t afford to lose good people and are keen to understand how you can retain your talent, why not come along to our workshop on 16^th February from 9.30 -12noon at Forest Farm Business Park, York where we will share tools, techniques, and ideas for helping to engage and connect with your teams.  To book your place, click here