Employee turnover is the loss of talent in the workforce over time. This can also be described simply as employees leaving your business. Some employee turnover is inevitable, as people outgrow their roles, or want to move on to other challenges.

The problem with employee turnover comes when it’s too high or when everyone is leaving for the same reasons. You don’t want to be the business that’s known for driving good employees away. So, how can you lower employee turnover and why is it so important for your business?

Improve The Work Environment

One of the most common reasons employees leave their job is a bad work environment. Many factors contribute to a bad environment including stress, unrealistic expectations, bad management, and feeling underappreciated.

You can’t make everyone love your business, but you can improve the overall work environment and improve employee morale. The first step is investing in your relationship with your employees. Get to know them, learn what’s important to them, and make changes that reflect that.

The second step is providing flexibility. Give your employees more control over their schedules by letting them choose hours, letting them leave when they finish tasks, and working with them to create a more manageable workflow.

Last but not least, encourage your employees to get creative and take on new challenges. Lack of stimulation is a huge factor in employee turnover. If someone does the same task every day for years, they’ll eventually grow tired and move on to something else.

By allowing creativity and innovation, you can prevent that cycle. Let your employees focus on new ways of benefiting your business, and hear them out.

These steps will improve your work environment, which simultaneously lowers employee turnover.

Hire The Right Employees The First Time

Hiring the right employees is a crucial part of lowering employee turnover. An employee who isn’t a good fit may leave sooner, causing your turnover to go up. So who are the right employees and how do you find them?

The ideal employee will be different for every company. It’s important that you understand the needs and challenges of your particular business before hiring someone new. Research which employees are currently doing the best at your business, and see what they have in common to get some ideas.

Once you know what characteristics make up your ideal employee, you have to find someone who has them. Instead of spending hours hunting for your new employees, make them come to you.

There are several ways you can go about this, but the easiest is to use innovative recruitment marketing services to attract your ideal candidate. Thanks to the extraordinary need for this service, you can have a company help you put these practices into action right now.

They’ll use branding, recruitment platforms, social media, and other cutting-edge methods to bring qualified recruits to you. Hiring the right employees the first time prevents your turnover from going up, and lowers your annual hiring costs.

Why It’s So Important

So, why is lowering employee turnover so important? There are a few reasons, so let’s stick to the top three.

1. There are significant costs to replacing employees. As a business, you’ll spend about one-fifth of an employee’s salary on replacing them. That adds up quickly if you’re constantly having to replace employees. It is much easier, and less costly, to focus on keeping your current employees happy.
2. High turnover can damage your reputation with potential employees and even customers. Many people don’t want to work for, or support, businesses that have a reputation for not treating employees well. Because of this, it’s crucial to reduce employee turnover so you can keep the business running smoothly.
3. High turnover puts too much stress on your remaining employees. They end up picking up the slack created by the loss of other employees, which can drive them to leave also. It’s not fair, practical, or effective to try to work in this kind of environment for any length of time.

When you lower employee turnover, you increase happiness and productivity. That always translates to a better outcome for your business.

Taking these steps to lower employee turnover leads to a better work environment and a more productive business.