High staff turnover is preventable, but many Australian businesses are not conducting ‘stay interviews’ to identify the problem before it’s too late.
“Businesses should be willing to run a health check, and ask the tough questions – Are we delivering on our promises to employees? Are we equipping staff with the right resources to enable them to do their job? Are there organisational barriers or hurdles that are making working life difficult or stressful for employees?” says David Reynolds, executive general manager for Chandler Macleod Consulting.
Reynolds recommends regularly interviewing a cross section of staff to measure satisfaction levels and identify surfacing problems early on. “Why find out about the problem after the horse has bolted?” says Reynolds.
The interviews should be conducted by an independent party. The next step is to take action and apply the gathered feedback to increase staff retention. “If anything helps to improve staff retention, then organisations will certainly be saving money. Losing knowledgeable and trained staff in this skills short market is incredibly costly, in terms of the intellectual property they take with them from the organisation, the cost of re-hiring for that role, and the impact on productivity because of low employee morale,” says Reynolds.
