“Managing people is a complex challenge. Maybe you'll get lucky and figure it out once, but whatever you did this time won't generate the same result next time.” – Theodore Kinni, Inc. magazine
This issue comes up when I speak to CEOs. They say things like: “We solved our employee turnover problem” or “Yeah, we did what we did last time but it did not seem to work – this time”
For those of you in the manufacturing arena, do you think in terms of SOLVING your reject rate, your waste rate and all the other issues? No, of course not - you think in terms of managing it every day. You know you are one incident away from it all blowing up. One of your production machines starts to wear out and all of the above rates go through the ceiling.
People are not machines – they change every day. All of us can think back over our careers and see times when we went through a personal problem that directly affected our job performance. Now multiply that by 50, 500 or 5,000 employees. Each person, each day working through lots of evolving problems with them handling or NOT handling them to a productive result.
Organizations need to understand that they will not SOLVE their employee turnover problem. It may be better than it was six months ago – but don’t think it will not rise up again. It will. You have to think in terms of managing – not solving. Most companies do not even have the basic systems or communication networks to reduce their turnover to begin with - much less be able to adapt those systems over time.
The first mistake I see organizations make is they take the remedy which worked last time, apply it again and it does not work. Since it did not work they then make some cosmetic and generally complicated changes in hopes that it will work again. But the real problem is the root cause of the employee turnover has changed. The old remedy is simply not relevant.
The real issue is having the right strategies, systems and communication networks in place from the beginning. In dealing with a lot of companies, as both a consultant and a VP of HR, I have learned you can greatly reduce your turnover by having certain strategies and systems. This will reduce your employee turnover well below the industry average. To continue to make progress, it must be managed every day by using the communication network to determine the new root cause.
Would you like to make a significant reduction in your employee turnover? Do you need some help from an expert?
