This blog will attempt to understand more fully and, therefore, prescribe ways to improve retention.
Why do employees leave? That is a question HR professionals, managers, and theorists can spend a career attempting to figure out.
The great resignation was a long time coming. We could see the edges of healthcare, retail, and education that have struggled to staff critical roles for years.
The disruption of COVID-19 only catalyzed many to stop going to a job. Some popular reasons were out of necessity due to a family member falling ill, fear of getting ill, or the vast changes affecting daycare and other school settings.
In this blog, we will gain an understanding of the motivating factors that move people to leave their jobs and try to understand what could be done to reduce the frequency of exits from our workplaces.
We will study some more meaningful literature on the subject and attempt to connect evidence-based research to actions companies can take.
Upfront, we will lay out what we will explore and some items we will not. Number one is that we will assume that the employees we are addressing are employees we wanted to hire, hoped would stay, and generally do a terrific job. Selection, poor-performing employees, disciplinary systems, attendance, and the like could take us down a deep rabbit hole, so we will not address those here. Number two is our hypothesis isn’t that turnover can be eliminated. What we do believe is turnover can be significantly reduced. Number three, we expect that most of the ideas for improving retention are known. Therefore, we do not wish to develop a NEW way to do it. Instead, we believe that taking the best of what is known and selecting the best cocktail of interventions will help all companies willing to put in the effort.
We will begin this blog by exploring the first 90-days of employment. The literature and our industry experience point to the first 90-days as critical to improving overall retention. That first blog, Exploring the First 90-days, in our Retention series will be published shortly.