Right now it is probably hard for you to think in terms of growing your organization. Your greatest asset, your people, is very unstable due to turnover, open positions and your skills gap. The idea of growing on an unstable base is unrealistic. The sad part is, you know of markets and opportunities which are available. How can you move into these new areas when you are having a hard time maintaining what you currently have?
I have been involved in several situations where an organization had catastrophic turnover and was not able to fill their open positions. Once we had resolved those issues, the very next thing that happened was the CEO asked if we could expand our efforts into a completely new area of business. Our answer each time was “Absolutely”. We compiled what we built for the original employee group, reviewed it and made modifications for the new area of business. The modifications were necessary due to some relatively minor changes in the workforce and in the operations. However, we had a foundation to work off of.
We had already seen how what we built for the original group was working. Turnover had already gone down and was continuing to trend down. We did not have to fill as many positions as we had fewer positions coming open due to reducing turnover. We could spend even more time figuring out and fine tuning our offensive against our turnover. During the process the two problems will synergize to make each issue better.
The organization will then be able to move into new and greater opportunities knowing that their people will be stable. As the organization prospers, it will be even easier to recruit and retain people. The word will get out and people will begin to see the organization in a very positive light. The organization will be able to hire and retain better people which will reduce the number of people required.
As the quality of your people goes up – the number of people required goes down
The next thing observed will be your productivity skyrocketing. You have fewer people producing more with fewer resources per dollar of revenue. The organization can move to entirely different incentive plans because of the higher level person you are now employing.
You can continue to fight the fires or you can grow your organization. Which one do you choose?
