Generally speaking employee turnover is seen as a bad thing. Aside from having to accept that someone may not want to work for your business any more, turnover can have a negative effect on moral and the cost involved in recruiting and training someone new can build up too. This may be the case for larger organisations. However, for smaller firms, SMEs and start-ups the discussion about positive employee turnover produces a strong argument.
Dr John Sullivan, an internationally known HR thought-leader said “true recruiters are always trying to steal away the best employees, even during tough economic times. If no one steals (or even tries to steal) your employees, it might mean they aren’t worth stealing.” With this in mind, we take a look at some of the positives of employee turnover.
Developing The Right Team
Smaller businesses may have started up fast, with a keen CEO employing new staff to get essential jobs done and help the business get moving and begin to grow. However, in the longer term as the business evolves, these people may no longer be the best people for the job. It’s important to assemble the right team over time and not just one of convenience. In this case, experiencing employee turnover may not be negative but simply part of the evolution of the business, helping it to grow, improve and discover the core strengths required by team members.
Identifying Poor Performers
Because during the recession most organisations saw their workforce fall, as they hire again focus is often on job security and so turnover is all too often seen as a negative. Reassessing and monitoring performance and ROIs will help you to evaluate whether or not it is bad for your organisation. Dr Sullivan talked about categorising turnover into the three categories of ‘regrettable’, ‘neutral’ or ‘desirable’. This will depend on who is leaving, why and how. In order to understand what kind of turnover you’re experiencing you’ll have to know your staff and have an idea about their performance rate, attitude, and skills. Regular reviews and assessment will allow you to see who is not performing as well as you’d like or who is causing holdups or low quality work. To lose these employees shouldn’t be detrimental to your business, it should be advantageous, and if one of these poor performers went to a competitor instead, well that’s just a bonus!
Encourage and Incentivise
Following on from the above, nurturing the top talent is just as important, as these are the people you don’t want to turnover! Regularly evaluating employees to recognise who is worthy of a promotion or bonus encourages staff to try their best. Often a high turnover rate itself may encourage employees to work harder. Some organisations seem to have implemented a company culture where great performance is key and employees either choose to continually improve or to leave. This may sound a little harsh, but if the right kind of incentive structure is in place, top performers will be able to enjoy the benefits of their hard work.
Organisations are recognising even more that low turnover is not such an important factor in evaluating business success. There is often no ideal level of turnover for firms, and some will be suited, and benefit from, a higher turnover. If you would like some advice on finding innovative new employees for your organisation, we work with hundreds of candidates who could be the perfect fit, so give us a call (0207 099 4839) and see how we can help you to recruit someone worth recruiting.
