As pandemic restrictions loosen and we return to the office, employee churn will fast become a problem for Australian businesses. In April, Gartner reported that 24 percent of Australian workers are actively seeking other employment. Moreover, as normality returns, post-pandemic workers are more confident there are better employment opportunities available, encouraging them to move jobs.
Employee churn is costly- directly impacting company’s revenue and profitability. However, the worst implications come in the form of productivity, efficiency, lowered employee morale, and loss of knowledge.
When key people leave, the ripple effect can be felt throughout an organisation and Scope Logic is seeing these issues arise with clients across all industries and company sizes.
We cannot prevent people from leaving; it’s natural for people to seek change and new challenges. Particularly in a post-pandemic world, we need to accept that things will look different. People have acclimatised to very different conditions- reduced one-on-one interaction with workmates, and more time at home means lack of personal bonds after a tough year has the potential to exhaust loyalty. They are more eager than ever to make moves to pursue their true passions or get the ball rolling for the ubiquitous greener pasture.
In this blog, we have put together three ways to manage the impact around employee churn, introduce fresh thinking and inject positive energy into your company as a result of staff changes.
Monitor the staff engagement level. Research has proven that improvement in staff engagement can help reduce turnover and alleviates recruitment issues because fewer empty positions are open to fill.
Those individuals who voluntarily terminate from an organisation are much less likely to be fully engaged; employees who gradually become less involved over time are far more likely to leave the organisation. Overall, just 9% of Australian workers are considered “engaged,” showing both high discretionary effort and high intent to stay with their current employer.
We recommend having more proactive measures to track engagement metrics, establish a continuous feedback process, and actively monitor team sentiment to provide great insight into staff performance. Companies can use these insights to focus on improving employee experience.
Explore high-tech delivery to reduce the financial consequence of staff turnover. With many technology-based options available, it’s sound management practice to consider a high-tech, automated delivery for hiring, onboarding and training. A positive onboarding experience is critical to establish good vibes between the new hire and the rest of the company, making a vast difference between significant ROI or a losing your new hire.
Establish an effective Knowledge management process to retain critical corporate knowledge of your company. Today, most organisations recognise knowledge as one of their most valuable competitive advantages. Devising a plan to keep knowledge continuity is necessary to ensure experience-based knowledge does not get lost in the process.
Knowledge management tools that support curation and storage, allowing knowledge to be searched for, found, and accessed, are a powerful weapon to help you maintain business and knowledge continuity now and into the future.