Vensure Coffee Talk Webinar
Analyzing Turnover What Story is Your Data Telling
Beatrice Runyan Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us today as we talk about Analyzing Turnover: What Story is Your Data Telling You? Just as a reminder, if you have any questions to submit them at the bottom of your screen — there is a Q and A. Please feel free to drop any questions that you have in the Q&A box, and we’ll be able to have some time at the end to answer as many of those questions as we can.
So, I’d like to get started and want to introduce you to our presenter today, Abraham Pollick. Abraham came to Vensure with deep experience in client service, organizational strategy, and human resources. He started his career journey after 14 years of being an entrepreneur and running a successful general contracting business. He has more than 25 years of client service and product management leadership experience. He’s a highly regarded keynote speaker and a global facilitator on several development topics in both business strategy and HR. Abraham has served on the boards of nonprofit organizations for over ten years and has also worked as a board chair. He holds a B.A. in Organizational Management with a minor in Social-Cultural Anthropology, and MPA studies in Product Development. Please help me in welcoming Abraham.
Abraham Gonzales-Pollick Thank you for that introduction. Hello, everyone, and thank you for taking the time to join us today for our coffee talk. We are excited to bring this information to you.
So, let’s dive in. Today’s topic, we’re really talking about analyzing turnover. You know, really, what is your story- or what story is your data telling you? A little bit more in what we’ll go over is we’ll look at turnover data, and we’re also going to look at organizational strategy as critical tools in helping us tell effective stories about the impact on our company and employees, as well as support a call to action to enhance our organization’s culture and efficiencies. On today’s topic, we really do unpack various key points and what drives turnover, what some of the impacts are, and also what can businesses do to help create an employee experience.
Now, today’s topic is just part one. In a couple of weeks, we’re going to come back to the conversation in a part two of Turnover. So hopefully some of you can join us on our next call here in a couple of weeks. Today’s agenda: we’re going to first start with organizational needs and then we will dive into critical data points and impacts. We’ll talk a little bit about best practices and then we’re going to dive into stay interviews. Let’s dive in.
What might be happening in an organization at any given time? Let’s start there. If you see here on the diagram on the right-hand side of the screen, not much is going on and simultaneously, consumer behavior is changing — it’s almost changing rapidly. By the second time, products and services become relevant, or more relevant, or not, all at the same time. Jobs and mandates of the future start to come into play.
An organization is not only balancing all these things, they’re also balancing processes that they have in place, processes that either work or need to be evolved or are now becoming inefficient. Some organizations start to become top heavy. Some organizations start to develop new skills that are needed to get the job done. And the financial position of an organization is changing and evolving. Leaders within the organization create culture based on the decisions that they’re making on all these moving parts. These decisions sometimes happen abruptly, and sometimes they happen gradually.
What could potentially be happening to the employee experience? Sometimes an employee comes to join an organization, and the organization that they joined a year ago may not be the same organization a year later, and probably won’t be the same organization a year from then. Now the employee is starting to think: Who are they in this organization? What is their purpose? How do the values or the purpose of the organization align with them personally? Given the information and some of the factors described on the previous slide, some organizations do have to make big decisions. Sometimes it’s necessary to restructure an organization for future sustainability and the relevance to the consumers or to their customers. Skillsets change, core competencies evolve, and products take on new value. For some customers, some products become more valuable, and sometimes those products aren’t as relevant anymore. So organizations need to make decisions on how do they address that product relevance, that service relevance. And the other thing that could be happening is structural changes are usually intended to solve business opportunities or defined business problems. Sometimes an organization will pivot or need to pivot, and then decisions have to be made.
As I mentioned before, these decisions that are made either all at once or gradually start to shift the culture and it starts to change naturally, the experience for employees that we’ve brought on board. As a result, turnover could potentially happen. Some turnover happens because that employee is deciding they no longer want to be part of the organization for many reasons: personal reasons or their values have changed, their needs have changed, or maybe they’ve evolved, and their skill sets have changed and they’re looking for other challenges. Sometimes the organization has to make a decision on whether or not they need the head count that they have.
Now let’s dive into some critical data points. Right now, we’re looking at retention. We’re looking at turnover, we’re looking at trying to retain our employees. We’re looking at critical data points. So, we look at retention rate to see how the organization is performing, how were our decisions that we made as an organization. How is that seen in our ability to retain our employees? Another critical data point is to look at turnover rate. Where is the turnover? What department is this turnover happening in? What parts of the business? At what stage of the business or quarter did we see the turnover higher or lower? All those critical data points inform other decisions that need to be made for the organization.
How much of the turnover is voluntary and or how much of it is involuntary, and what’s driving that? Sometimes it’s important to look at perhaps the department or the direct manager, depending on how large the organization is and how broad the scope of responsibility is for any one manager. It’s important to look at the turnover rate by manager to see where, you know, what could the employee experience be or what is happening there. It’s also a really great critical data point to look at the retention rate for star employees or the turnover thereof. We have our high potentials. So if an organization is going through succession planning and identifying their high potential employees or their star employees and they’re starting to see a turnover there, what could potentially be happening within the organization? What was happening with the leadership experience, or what was happening within the decisions of the business that might be causing such a thing? Did we not provide more responsibility or meaningful work or stretch opportunities for our high potential?
And another critical data point to look at is the cost of turnover. So, let’s dive into some of the costs. When an organization is navigating through turnover, there are a lot of cost implications. And what you’ll see here is multiple factors here. So sometimes with turnover, the cost could be as much as 33% of an annual salary of that individual leaving the business. 33% is pretty significant, right? We’ll look down here. There are hiring costs associated with the recruiters that are on the project. Any marketing teams that are helping advertise the position or there are job board costs and then there are interview expenses. The time spent on anyone that is involved in the interview process. There are compensation demands as the as the world is changing and cost of living is increasing, and compensation needs by some of our candidates are rising. There are costs too, associated with transferring knowledge. And sometimes this is the insight costs of productivity. It takes time to gather all of the knowledge and process information from any one individual that’s leaving the business and then to have to transfer it in the time that it takes to transfer that knowledge to a new individual and get them up to speed. There are training costs. So, any new person coming on to the business, having to put them through training and development programs and onboarding programs, not just to teach them about the company culture, but also the job itself, all have cost implications and there’s an engagement cost.
What happens when we start to see turnover in any one department or group of individuals? Sometimes the rest of the employees start to think, well, what’s happening? What is happening with the business? Why are they leaving? Why am I still here? And so we start to see some engagement opportunities come up. And having to get in front of those engagement opportunities have costs associated with it. Sometimes productivity changes and shifts and sometimes work gets moved over to other employees and the productivity is impacted. Sometimes customers feel the impacts when there’s turnover, perhaps response times change, perhaps the quality of the delivery might change. And there’s time, right? Sometimes some people say that there’s no costs associated with time. But time is precious. And how much time is spent in the efforts to try to backfill some of these positions? Time: it’s time away from other activities that can be done, like product innovation so that so that an organization can evolve their purpose or evolve their product or service offerings back to their customers.
And then there’s the brand cost. What is this saying about our brand? What is it saying about, you know, positions or positions either going away or people leaving organizations? What is what are former employees saying on certain social media boards that the brand is also impacted here?
So what can you do about it? Given all these factors, what you see here is what leaders and business decision makers can do. You know, really some quick tips are get in front of your employees sooner, don’t wait until an exit interview. And we’re going to talk a little bit more about stay interviews here in just a moment. But get in front of your employees soon to really understand what their thoughts are. The individuals right on the ground, frontline people working with customers, working with clients, providing the service, providing the product. They have a lot of intel, a lot of information. Create an environment that boosts productivity. There’s a lot of ways to create that kind of environment. It’s not just saying, hey, let’s hit these goals, let’s hit these targets, but really socializing the why behind the work that we do. And many times, we’re dealing with adult professionals and people want to know, where are you taking me now? Where are we going? And so, giving more insights as to the why can really help create an environment of productivity.
But not just that, safety, a safe environment where people can do the work and it is okay to fail a little bit. And it’s okay to learn from mistakes. It helps produce more engagement, more productivity, create inclusive, meaningful environments. It’s one thing to say, “We welcome everyone”. But it’s another thing to actually demonstrate, actually celebrate the individuals and the diversity on the team. And what do I mean by diversity? You know, with diversity, there’s a diversity of, you know, the natural diversity, right? There’s a difference between different races, right? But there’s also diversity in thought. There’s a diversity in work ethic. There’s a diversity in the way work gets done in approach. So, when we think about creating inclusive, meaningful environments, it’s helping create the space where everyone is welcomed in the way that they approach work and teaching everyone equally how to get the work done for the job that has to get done. And recognizing and thanking the employee for choosing to join the organization and choosing to be here. And I know many of these may seem really simple on the surface, but sometimes some of these things do get missed. Sometimes we forget that employees are making the choice to be with the organization or to belong to the organization. When they have so many other options to choose from in their life and where they want to work. Right. And so here are just some insights that could be potentially helpful for all of you. You know, people want a place to belong. People want to feel successful. And when employees have their needs met, they can then effectively meet the needs of the customers. Just a nice little stat here: 56% of employees are less likely to look for a new job when they feel recognized.
So, with that being said, stay interviews. We talked a little bit about this at the beginning of the coffee talk. And as we get ready to close out our coffee talk for today, let’s talk about stay interviews. Not exit interviews, by the time an exit comes, or a termination is happening, it’s too late. Many people probably won’t feel as obligated to tell you what they really think. Some might, some won’t. Most won’t. So, in stay interviews, this gives you the opportunity to understand in real time what’s happening. What are the thoughts out there? You know, as a leader, what you can do is to really understand why people stay, and understand what are their current pain points, really take the time to have a conversation. So, whether you’re doing stay interviews one on one or whether you’re grouping individuals by job responsibility or by job function, but really understanding what’s getting in the way, we’re can we be doing better? Listening to employee feedback. There are so many ways to get feedback, and your feedback really is a gift. And feedback is really hard to get, right? And sometimes leaders are equipped to respond to the feedback in the moment, and sometimes they’re not. Maybe sometimes we can’t respond to every piece of the feedback for various reasons, budget constraints, or objectives and strategy for the future. But nonetheless, it’s still important to listen and acknowledge and welcome the insight, the input coming from the employees.
Help exercise a healthy work-life balance. You know, some professionals call it a work-life balance and some call it a work-life integration. You know, it just really depends on the person and their work ethic. But, nonetheless, help create the healthy work-life balance. What is reasonable for someone to accomplish in any one given day and what work will be there tomorrow? Offer potential development opportunities. So really great place to start and be, constantly, right? As people are evolving, skill sets change, interests change. It’s good to always, constantly, be challenging your employees to develop, hire, and upskill. It allows them to stay relevant personally, right? And it allows them to stay relevant for the business and help bring more ideas or thoughts to the business. If you’re not doing this already within your organization, implement rewards and recognition programs or perhaps revamp what you have. It’s okay to evolve your rewards and recognition program. Sometimes what worked a year or two years ago, five years ago, it was relevant for the time, but today it may not be. It’s okay to sunset some of your programs and to give way to new rewards and recognition programs. Sometimes you could grant goodwill compensation increases. Sometimes you don’t have to stay within the merit cycle, right? Sometimes you can step outside of that. Some organizations do it. It works really well. Sometimes this might not work for your organization because of financial responsibilities.
And the last tip that we have for you today is to create an overall culture that reinforces a positive work environment. So important, right? Create an overall culture that reinforces a positive work environment. We believe that people want to come to work to succeed. People want to come to work to feel comfortable. People want to come to work so that they don’t feel like it’s doom and gloom or a bad place to spend their day. So, as part of the stay interview process, these are all things that we can that we recommend that you can do sooner rather than later. Sooner, right out of the gate. And just a brief stat here for you. Stay interviews could improve your employee turnover by 20% or more. And if not improving your turnover, improving the employee experience while the employees are there.
All right. So, just to recap for today’s coffee talk, we talked about what story is your data telling you. We talked a little bit about turnover costs. We unpacked company culture and some best practices. And we also started our conversation today with examining the business and customer needs and behaviors that influence the decisions that leaders have to make, and also decisions that employees have to make. And so, we hope that you found this information helpful or that the information inspired you to reimagine the way you approach your work and your employee experiences. Have a look at our QR code here on our slide and to get more information about our services and what we can offer. And we really hope to see you on our next coffee talk coming in a couple of weeks. Thank you so much for your time, and we hope you have an amazing week.
Beatrice Runyan Right? Thank you so much, Abraham, for some great insight on not only analyzing turnover, but some things you can do to help mitigate some of the turnover. That is greatly appreciated. There was a somebody had their hand raised. It looked like it’s gone now. So, if you have questions, please feel free to drop them in the Q&A, we did have a couple of questions. The first one was on exercising a healthy work life balance. How can someone manage a monopolistic organization? So, looking at healthy work life balance, how could that be played into with looking at turnover?
Abraham Gonzales-Pollick You know, it’s a really important question, and I think it depends on the role. It depends on whether it’s the individual contributor asking the question, or it depends on the leader or it depends on the business decision maker. And not to say that- I think that neither role is more sophisticated than the other. They’re all important. But how do you navigate through some work life balance? You know, there’s no one answer. There’s no one answer to approaching this. It’s all about, you know, the individual’s personal values and what’s important and boundaries that are there that they have personally also saying, you know what? What am I responsible for? What did I sign up for? What did I say I was going to be part of? So, there’s no one answer to the approach here. Good question.
Beatrice Runyan Great. Thank you. Another question that came through is how much of what you are seeing is based on the pandemic?
Abraham Gonzales-Pollick Well, you know, that’s another really great question. You know, the pandemic changed the world. Really, when we think about what was happening to organizations and businesses, we saw a lot of businesses ride the wave, and some businesses had to shut down. But we also saw people reexamine their life and how they spend their time and what’s important to them. And so there was a lot of turnover for a lot of different factors, not only happening on the business side, but happening to people personally as we start to lift out of the pandemic. In some regard, we’re seeing new and meaningful jobs that have been created as well and new businesses start to rise. We’re also seeing organizations shift their culture a little bit. Some organizations are starting to come back to the office right now and that impacts some individuals and what they’re looking for and how they spend their time. So, the pandemic certainly influenced a lot of decisions and outcomes.
Beatrice Runyan Great. We’ve got a few more questions. We’ll have time for one more. I just want to reiterate any questions that we are not able to answer during this, we will make sure to follow up with you individually on that. The last question we have is: “My workforce has been rocked by people liking working at home, but customer service, government, they want people back in the office. So how do you address that?”
Abraham Gonzales-Pollick Well, you know, every organization is different, right? There are some positions where it’s essential to be in person. When we think about some of those positions out there, like nurses and doctors and retail workers, it’s essential to be in person. There are organizations that naturally have been in office type roles. Some individuals work from home and have showed a lot of success, right? There are a lot of pros and cons to both coming into the office, the collaboration that happens, the ability to interact with individuals, the ability to update on a new process, improvements in the moment and in person. I think that many organizations are still figuring out the balance and what’s right for their organization. And some industries don’t really have a choice right in in how those jobs are performed. It depends, right? If you’re lifting containers off a ship off one of the ports, you might have to be there in person, for example. It just- it depends, depends on what the job is.
Beatrice Runyan Absolutely.
Abraham Gonzales-Pollick Well, I think these were all really great questions. Bea, thank you so much. I wish we had more time to unpack some more. But again, thank you so much to our participants for listening in. We hope that you get something out of that.
Beatrice Runyan Yup. And there were also people who were asking about the webinar recording. The recording usually is sent out within a couple of days, so you should see an email coming through within the next few days with a link to the recording of the webinar. And again, any questions that we did not get to, we will make sure to follow up with you individually. And again, we thank you all for your time. We hope you have a wonderful rest of your Tuesday and we look forward to seeing you in a couple of weeks on our next webinar. Hope everyone has a great day.
