Employees in today’s society cost a lot to keep around, and they cost even more when you need to replace them. Finding and retaining the best employees is tougher than it sounds, but very few discuss the truth about these costs and the multiple ways that it impacts businesses.
Recruiting and training a new employee requires staff time away from their regular duties in order to get the new employee up to speed. But when employees voluntarily turnover, this can cost the company even more resources. Costs are produced by the amount of turnover that happens in the company, and depending on the complexity of their job and their level of management, the cost of turnover can range quite significantly. According to this article, losing an employee can cost a company $15,000 to $25,000, but it’s a lot more when you weigh in additional variables. These variables include:
- The hiring process (advertising, screening, interviewing)
- Onboarding and providing training materials
- Loss of productivity because it takes time for the employee to reach their full potential
In order to keep the best, you must be the best. This means that for an employee to stay at work, they can’t just be surviving, but thriving in their work environment and enjoy the people they’re working with.
To reduce employee turnover rates, we’ve come up with three ways you can combat these costs!
First problem: Lack of knowledge
When employees feel as if they lack knowledge about the company and the industry, they begin to get frustrated. A company without a unified vision creates a sense of confusion among their employees. They’re often left wondering what the company stands for, what their goals are, and have many other questions about the company itself. Without a solidified message, training and onboarding can be lost in translation. Training is not free and often relatively expensive because it takes time out of someone else’s schedule to get a new employee onboard. And when employees aren’t onboarded properly, the company has already lost the employee right from the start.
What you can do: A great employee onboarding process produces great benefits, especially for the long term. According to this article, employees who participate in a structured employee onboarding process are 69% more likely to stay with an organization for 3 years. Within that amount of time, employees are able to develop a relationship with the company and may even stay on longer! In today’s society, Learning Management Systems (LMS) are growing in popularity as a way to onboard employees. eLearning is emerging as a leader in educational technology as a way for people to access training documents digitally and be onboarded without taking time away from someone else.
Second problem: Lack of employee engagement
A happy employee will produce great results for your company, but what happens when your employees are unhappy? Companies without an engagement strategy will see a huge turnover rate, ultimately hurting their company’s success. It’s human nature to want to be engaged and social with the people around you. In today’s millennial workforce, a lack of feedback and no recognition for their contributions can discourage employees from producing quality work and developing trust with the organization. Without an engagement strategy, employees won’t feel valued for the work and effort they put in, thus leading to high turnover rates and costing the company money to find a replacement.
What you can do: Your hard-working employees deserve praise and kudos, so give them some! Employee engagement is a continual process, which won’t happen overnight. It’s important for companies to develop an engagement strategy to develop trust, integrity, commitment, and communication. Creating a high-feedback environment and checking in with your employees regularly will speed up the process and lead to a stronger bond. 62% of employees suggested that a great way to improve engagement is to listen to their opinions about the company. After all, they are the ones who understand the company best from working directly with the products and services.
Third problem: Lack of technology
We’re not living in the dinosaur age, so there should be no reason for a company to use outdated technology. Technology that is not current with the evolving company can actually slow down the company’s efforts to grow, but how can they grow if the technology isn’t growing with them? Your typical employee was most likely raised in a world surrounded by computers and is pretty proficient with technology. When they encounter technology that they don’t understand how to operate right away, they may feel frustrated. This frustration affects job performance, and this can easily be solved by searching for the right technology to meet the company’s needs.
What you can do: Today, an online employee intranet can completely change the way that your employees work. Not only can an intranet make employees more productive and efficient, but it can also help prevent many costly mistakes. Employees won’t have to spend nearly as much time searching for documents or quickly communicate with others because all the resources they need are located in a single place.
Magentrix Social Intranet enables your employees to share, collaborate, and work smarter, which makes it the perfect technology to implement to increase employee engagement! Interested to see how it works and want to increase your employee engagement today? You can check it out here.
