How many people resigned from your company in 2019? If it was around 25 percent of your total workforce, you’re in good company (or should I say bad company). That’s right. Around one in four US employees quit their jobs every year.
That’s pretty staggering.
It’s also costly.
The average cost of staff turnover is a hefty 21% of an employee’s salary. Lose a handful of key people from your workforce in a 12-month period and you’re taking a big hit to the bottom line, not to mention morale and productivity.
Naturally, the reasons for quitting are as varied as the driving laws across all 50 states of America. Still, a comprehensive Glassdoor analysis shows that most transitions between companies relate to career advancement.
In other words, most of the people leaving your team are doing so to get more pay and a better job title with another company.
There’s food for thought.
So, what can you do about it?
Tip 1: Understand that job stagnation harms employee retention
We know why people are leaving, and we know that it costs more to recruit than retain. Therefore, what are executives and HR managers not doing to hang on to their talented workers?
According to Andrew Chamberlain of Glassdoor, they’re not offering their employees a clear path to promotion.
Sure, pay matters, but so does progression.
By providing better career opportunities, employers can actually do quite a bit to retain their talent. Chamberlain: “Workers who don’t see a clear progression from their current role to a better position from their current role in their company ultimately turn to opportunities elsewhere.”
In short, offering employees a clear path to promotion needs to be one of your key retention strategies if you’re to convince workers that the grass really isn’t greener in another organization. But you need to think beyond perks and work-life balance. You need to show them that they have a meaningful future with your company.
“The more embedded employees are in an organization, the more likely they are to stay.”
SHRM
Tip 2: Offer growth opportunities for a positive employee experience
The ‘path to promotion’ concept is touched on in the Deloitte 2017 Human Capital Trends Report, which highlights the importance of the employee experience and the new world of learning.
According to the report, one of the five key factors that contribute to that positive employee experience is growth opportunity. That includes:
- On-the-job training and support
- Facilitated talent mobility (helping people move from role to role)
- Self-directed, dynamic learning (self-administered, self-motivated learning, often using online environments)
- High-impact learning culture (in which individuals and the organization as a whole are encouraged to increase knowledge, competence and performance)
Interestingly, although nearly 80% of executives rated employee experience as (very) important, only 22% reported that their companies were excellent at building a differentiated employee experience. There’s clearly a lot of work to be done in this area.
“The learning curve is the earning curve.”
Josh Bersin, “The use of MOOCs and online education is exploding. Here’s why.”
Tip 3: Provide access to education in the workplace
You may have spotted that, at the heart of all these opportunities for growth, is learning. And that requires access to education.
Of course, education can take many forms from traditional hands-on and instructor-led training to eLearning and personal coaching.
It’s nice to know that most U.S. employers (92%) do actually offer their workforce some type of educational benefits. But that in itself brings us back to our original question: Why do so many workers quit to get a better job title with more pay in another organization?
After all, if most employers are providing access to education (which means a positive employee experience and a path to progression), surely employees should be reluctant to leave their benefactors. This leads us to Tip 4…
Tip 4: Give employees the education benefits they want
According to the Education Benefits: 2019 Survey Results, the most common type of educational benefit offered by employers is tuition assistance/reimbursement (63%). Yet only 1% to 5% of employees take advantage of these schemes.
There’s a conclusion to be drawn here: Employers are not offering their employees the benefit that they want. So, if employees don’t want tuition reimbursement, what do they want?
One benefit they’d rather have is a student loan payment scheme.
Instead of receiving the cost of tuition once studies are complete, they’d receive either a matching or flat contribution every month to help pay off their student debt.
Almost 80% of workers with student loan debt say they want help in this area. Unfortunately, only 4% of employers currently offer some sort of student loan repayment assistance benefit.
Top three reasons for providing student loan repayment benefits:
1. Attract future talent (89%)
2. Retain current employees (69%)
3. Maintain/increase employee satisfaction & loyalty (67%)
2019 Education Benefits Survey
Tip 5: Provide self-directed, continuous learning opportunities
Employees also want help moving upwards through the ranks of your organization. Offering your employees accessible training programs is a great way to do this. The Deloitte 2017 Human Capital Trends Report backs this up:
“Employees at all levels expect dynamic, self-directed, and continuous learning opportunities from their employers”.
Certainly, today’s always-connected mobile devices have made learning anywhere, anytime possible for almost every worker. Pick a subject and you can go online and find a video, podcast or complete course for it.
So, it’s a shame that so many employers are still struggling with internally focused, outdated platforms and static learning approaches. They need to recognize that their employees expect a non-traditional, self-directed learning environment as part of their working lives.
If not, they’ll simply move elsewhere.
A good example of the new type of courses that are being developed for today’s employees is the Leader Workout Group™ https://opengateresources.com/leader-workout-group/for emerging and mid-level managers. This virtual leadership course diverts from traditional leadership development programs by offering continuous learning in digestible bites. It also combines practical skills practice with small group accountability and 1:1 feedback.
The popularity of on-line, bite-sized learning among busy employees is easy to understand. Knowledge can be easily absorbed, skills are reinforced, and the time commitment is doable.
And that has to be good for employee retention.
As this article reveals, there’s a lot that employers can do to retain their employees—and it’s worth doing. You can read more about the reasons behind employees leaving one company for another in the Glassdoor Economic Research report “Why do workers quit? The factors that predict employee turnover,” by Dr Andrew Chamberlain (2017). Click here to learn more about Leader Workout GroupTM https://opengateresources.com/leader-workout-group/for emerging and mid-level managers or contact Nancy Maki at nmaki@opengateresources.com.
AUTHOR BOX
Nancy Maki, LMHC, SPHR is the President and Managing Partner of Open Gate Consulting in Seattle, WA. Nancy is a leadership development consultant focused on building influential leaders. She has spent over 20 years walking with leaders as they navigate some of their most complicated issues. Contact Nancy at 206/512-7109 or nmaki@opengateresources.com