In a recent survey by Express Employment Professionals and Harris Polls, 33% of hiring managers anticipate increasing employee turnover in 2024. Employee turnover can cost the company tens of thousands of dollars per employee and burden remaining employees, impacting overall performance and the bottom line.
But leaders don’t have to wait to be blindsided by their best employees walking away. Instead, they can assess employee retention risk factors while there is still time to address them.
5 Areas for Assessing Employee Retention Risk
1. Inclusion
Every employee has three basic human needs: to feel liked, competent, and independent. Wrapped up inside those needs is the desire to be included and valued, both as an employee and as a person.
Leaders can practice the behaviors of an inclusive leader and promote psychological safety and diversity of thought to help team members feel like they are part of something important. In addition, being transparent and clear with expectations will help people feel valued and improve engagement. One Gallup poll found that 54% of employees who feel their managers are open and approachable are engaged, compared to only 2% who feel they can’t approach their managers.
2. Work Relationship
As the old saying goes, people don’t leave jobs—they leave managers. Possibly, the most important factor in employee retention is the manager-employee relationship.
Leaders must be absolutely sure they know how their employees feel about their working relationship. Employees may not be willing to openly share if they think they might risk their positions, or they may not wish to sour the relationship further by being open and candid. Leaders must cultivate trust and openness and communicate that honesty in the relationship is vital to success.
3. Work-Life Satisfaction
With increased emphasis on work-life integration in recent years, it’s more important than ever to ensure that employees feel like they can adequately meet the demands of their jobs and their personal lives—and have time to take care of their own wellbeing!
Work-life integration looks different for everyone. Some people thrive in a fully remote, very flexible environment; their family obligations may be unpredictable, or they may want flexibility to pursue personal goals. Other people prefer an in-person arrangement but may need a slight schedule adjustment to accommodate a lengthy commute or home commitments.
The key to encouraging work-life integration is talking openly with employees about what they need and working with them as much as possible before they find another employer to help them meet their needs.
4. Job Interest Alignment
Ideally, every member of the team will be perfectly aligned with the organization’s values and culture, the work they perform on the team, and the overall work arrangements and environment. Of course, that perfect alignment is rare. The key for leaders is to understand where the misalignment is, how vital it is, and how it can be improved to retain the employee.
There can be any number of reasons for an employee to be misaligned in a current role. For example, an entry-level employee or college student may take a position on the factory floor, even though it’s not an ultimate career goal. Can that student eventually move into a more advanced position with additional education? Is it possible to help that person find a long-term career in the organization if other skills and values align?
On the other hand, a person whose skills fit perfectly in a role may discover that the work arrangements no longer provide work-life integration due to some change at home. In that circumstance, it may be possible to help the employee realign or reconfigure work arrangements to retain a valuable person.
5. Career Goals
To retain great employees, leaders must spend time actively discussing long-term career goals—even if it seems like those goals might take the employee away from the company! It may seem like a paradox, but employee surveys show that frequent career, development, and goal conversations improve engagement and retention. One study found that 82% of employees who have career conversations more than once per month are highly engaged, compared to only 53% who have discussions once per year.
Every leader should regularly discuss career choices and options within the company with each team member. Career conversations should cover alignment between the current role and ultimate goals, development plans, and the practical contributions the employee can use within the team to further career development.
Putting It All Together
With each direct report, leaders should assess these five areas and determine which employees are most at risk. In addition, evaluate the impact of each employee’s departure on the team and organization. Some sudden departures will have a greater impact than others; if an employee’s departure would significantly impact the department and that employee is at high risk of leaving, the leader should focus highly on retaining that employee.
Assign each team member to one of the following quadrants:
Once leaders understand who is at high risk of leaving and how impactful their departure would be, they can put effort into the correct places to improve overall retention.
To help you clearly see retention risks for each team member, download our Employee Turnover Risk Worksheet and complete one for each person on your team. Once you understand the risk for each team member, you can see more clearly what changes to make individually, within the team, and even across the organization.
Employee retention involves much more than ensuring everyone has adequate pay and benefits (though those things are important). The experts at Stewart Leadership can help. Whether you need cultural assessments, team building, or executive coaching, our experienced professionals can help you design a workplace that engages employees and grows the bottom line.
Self Check:
- Overall, how high is our employee turnover rate? How high is it on my team?
- How would I rate the retention risk of my key employees?
- How often do I assess retention risk on my team? Have I ever done so?
