Employee Turnover Quotes

I drive by a business that has a permanent sign that says, "Always hiring." Why in the world would they advertise the fact that they have continual turnover? They might as well say, "You'll hate working here.

When employees are motivated and love what they do you will see higher productivity, less turnover, healthier communication, increased loyalty, and a happier environment.

lack of training and limited opportunity for advancement are two of the leading reasons for turnover.

Cooperatives have lower absentee rates and less worker turnover than their conventional competitors. (For instance, the annual rate of turnover in the Mondragon cooperatives in 1974 was two percent, while in comparable capitalist firms it was 14 percent.)94 Members show relatively high individual work effort, tending to act as their own supervisors, at least to a greater degree than employees do elsewhere. Job rotation, where it happens, enhances the attractiveness of the work. And there are greater incentives to help one another than in a competitive environment.

For a service business, nothing is more valuable than engaged employees who feel they can make a difference and want to stay with the organization. Turnover is costly. The best turnover is internal turnover, where people are growing their careers within your enterprise rather than moving someplace else. People aren’t wired to be nomads. They just need to find a place where they feel they can make a real impact.

And when it comes to addiction, employers with successful employee assistance programs report improvements in morale and productivity and decreases in absenteeism, accidents, downtime, turnover, and theft. Employers with long-standing programs also report better health status among employees and family members.

Many energy companies will use models to value assets with lifetimes of 20 years or longer—things like power plants, pipelines, and natural gas wells. Even if the model was sufficient when first developed, it can still fail before its lifetime is up. Assumptions made 15 years earlier are often invalidated due to regulatory changes, population shifts, and technological changes. Exacerbating this problem is the problem of employee turnover—commonly, the original developers of the models have moved to other jobs when problems develop. After a number of years, organizations need to take steps to ensure that someone still understands every model that is in production.

Burned-out, stressed-out, and frazzled leaders foster organizations that experience high turnover, low employee engagement, steep healthcare costs, and dysfunctional teams that often work against one another. The current models of leadership require organizations to motivate their people largely with fear and extrinsic rewards. Though no one argues that these forms of motivation can produce short-term results, they are usually accompanied by distrust and cynicism in the workplace, which have long-term negative consequences.

Those working in slaughterhouses, for example, are often underpaid and overworked, lack insurance, and are required to use dangerous equipment without adequate training. Turnover and rates of injury for jobs in anymal industries are among the highest in the United States. Slaughterhouse employees are almost always poor, they are often immigrants, and they are inevitably viewed by their employers as expendable. Moreover, if we would not like to kill pigs, hens, or cattle all day long, then we should not make food choices that require others to do so. Our dietary choices determine where others work. Will our poorest laborers work in fields of green or in buildings of blood? Fieldwork is difficult, but I worked in the fields as a child, and I am very glad that I never worked in a slaughterhouse.

HR can and should serve as advisors to organizational leadership to develop strategic workforce plans that link to the organization’s strategic plan to ensure that the right people are on board so that the firm can meet its objectives and fulfill its mission. HR partners with line management to provide development opportunities to maximize the potential of each and every employee. HR advises management on total rewards programs (compensation and benefits) and rewards and recognition programs designed to minimize costly employee turnover and to maximize employee engagement and retention.

I’m not quite sure what promotions, if any, are or are not available to me or my colleagues at our level. There seems to be a high rate of turnover that may be, in part, due to a lack of clarity on how to grow within the business.” “While I feel like there is a lot of future opportunity in the organization, I have no idea how to get promoted. My manager has never discussed development or promotion opportunities with me.” “It has never been explained to me what each role entails and what I need to achieve in order to progress. I have only been told by my current and past team leader to ‘carry on how you’re doing,’ which is a compliment. However, it would be better if everyone was given some sort of document which consists of targets you need to hit in order to progress in the company.

Here are some scary statistics: Each year the average company loses 20-50% of its employee base Cost of replacing entry level employees: 30-50% of their annual salary Cost of replacing mid-level employees: 150% of their annual salary Millennial turnover costs the U.S. economy $30.5 billion annually. The cost of replacing high-level or highly specialized employees: 400% of their annual salary.

That’s why Henry Ford started paying his lowest-paid employees $5 a day in 1914, more than $110 in today’s dollars.13 He had to: Turnover at the company was 370 percent in 1913.

Yet a 2017 Gallup poll found that only 3 in 10 employees strongly agree with the statement that their opinions count at work.6 Gallup calculated that by “moving that ratio to six in 10 employees, organizations could realize a 27 percent reduction in turnover, a 40 percent reduction in safety incidents and a 12 percent increase in productivity.”7 That's why it's not enough for organizations to simply hire talent.

Bad fit customers and technical support There is a line between helping a customer and building custom software for them. You want to avoid one-off features because the effort to build one custom feature is the same effort to help ten good fit customers. If a customer requires custom work, then they are usually a poor fit. These bad customers will drain the life from your team and these customers redirect resources from critical tasks, such as mandatory upgrades, and helping good fit customers succeed. Enough bad customers can cause low employee morale and high turn-over in any department. Here are the differences between good and bad fit customers: Good Customer Traits Bad Customer Traits Software performs the features that he needs Constantly emails about missing features An attractor that leaves reviews, case studies Rude or unpleasant over the phone, a detractor Entry level staff members provide support Senior level staff provides technical support Requires a short call to set-up and configure Requires coding changes and tons of phone support Company is organized Company is a mess Fits into an ideal customer profile Fits into no customer profile Feels like a good fit You get a bad feeling about the company

said to expect such thoughts when I returned home, and that those thoughts would fade with time. I sure hoped she was right. I still had a shock every time I looked in the mirror, a pleasant shock mind you, but nevertheless a shock. Even though my life had immeasurably changed for the better, I was still having trouble coming to terms with the change itself. I had been told time and time again that this was normal, but that didn’t make it any easier to experience. I suppose I had been depressed before the accident. I looked around my cottage, surprised that this had been my taste. The curtains were hideous, and everything was dark. I suppose I had been trying to hide away from the world. Still, my job wouldn’t have helped. I had been the marketing manager for a local small art gallery. The boss had been a screaming banshee, and that was a polite description for her. She had been impossible to deal with and had a regular staff turnover. I had been there years longer than any other employee. Looking back, I wondered how I had taken her verbal abuse and yelling for years, but I suppose I had been used to being bullied since school. I shook myself. That was all behind me now, and my only connection with that was a desire to work in some way to help people who had been bullied. There was altogether way too much bullying in the world. Now I had enough money to buy a nice place, but first things first. I was going to concentrate on starting my business. I would simply buy some bright new cushions to make the place look a little better and make sure all the curtains were open. I’d buy some nice smelling incense and an oil burner, and burn lavender oil. I was craving nice fragrances, after being accustomed to the antiseptic smell of the hospital, a smell I am sure I will never forget.

Granted, employees are a very different type of customer, one that falls outside of the traditional definition. After all, instead of them paying you, you’re paying them. Yet regardless of the direction the money flows, one thing is clear: employees, just like other types of customers, want to derive value from their relationship with the organization. Not just monetary value, but experiential value, too: skill augmentation, career development, camaraderie, meaningful work, a sense of purpose, and so on. If a company or an individual leader fails to deliver the requisite value to an employee, then—just like a customer, they’ll defect. They’ll quit, driving up turnover, inflating recruiting/training expenses, undermining product/service quality, and creating a whole lot of unnecessary stress on the organization. So even though a company pays its employees, it should still provide them with a value-rich employment experience that cultivates loyalty. And that’s why it’s prudent to view both current and prospective employees as a type of customer. The argument goes beyond employee engagement, though. There’s a whole other reason why organizational leaders have a lot to gain by viewing their staff as a type of customer. That’s because, by doing so, they can personally model the customer-oriented behaviors that they seek to encourage among their workforce. How better to demonstrate what a great customer experience looks like than to deliver it to your own team? After all, how a leader serves their staff influences how the staff serves their customers. Want your team to be super-responsive to the people they serve? Show them what that looks like by being super-responsive to your team. Want them to communicate clearly with customers? Show them what that looks like by being crystal clear in your own written and verbal communications. There are innumerable ways for organizational leaders to model the customer experience behaviors they seek to promote among their staff. It has to start, however, by viewing those in your charge as a type of customer you’re trying to serve. Of course, viewing staff as customers doesn’t mean that leaders should cater to every employee whim or that they should consent to do whatever employees want. Leaders sometimes have to make tough decisions for the greater good. In those situations, effectively serving employees means showing respect for their concerns and interests, and thoughtfully explaining the rationale behind what might be an unpopular decision. The key point is simply this: with every interaction in the workplace, leaders have an opportunity to show their staff what a great customer experience looks like. Whether you’re a C-suite executive or a frontline supervisor, that opportunity must not be squandered.

The principal purpose of this program was to vent grievances and address them where possible. And I think this program was as important as pay in keeping employees with us. Productivity in part is the product of tenure. That’s why I believe that turnover is the most expensive form of labor expense. I am proud that, during my thirty years at Pronto and Trader Joe’s, we had virtually no turnover of full-time employees, except for the ordinary human problems of too, too solid flesh.

I’m Jay Powers, the circulating nurse”; “I’m Zhi Xiong, the anesthesiologist”—that sort of thing. It felt kind of hokey to me, and I wondered how much difference this step could really make. But it turned out to have been carefully devised. There have been psychology studies in various fields backing up what should have been self-evident—people who don’t know one another’s names don’t work together nearly as well as those who do. And Brian Sexton, the Johns Hopkins psychologist, had done studies showing the same in operating rooms. In one, he and his research team buttonholed surgical staff members outside their operating rooms and asked them two questions: how would they rate the level of communications during the operation they had just finished and what were the names of the other staff members on the team? The researchers learned that about half the time the staff did not know one another’s names. When they did, however, the communications ratings jumped significantly. The investigators at Johns Hopkins and elsewhere had also observed that when nurses were given a chance to say their names and mention concerns at the beginning of a case, they were more likely to note problems and offer solutions. The researchers called it an “activation phenomenon.” Giving people a chance to say something at the start seemed to activate their sense of participation and responsibility and their willingness to speak up. These were limited studies and hardly definitive. But the initial results were enticing. Nothing had ever been shown to improve the ability of surgeons to broadly reduce harm to patients aside from experience and specialized training. Yet here, in three separate cities, teams had tried out these unusual checklists, and each had found a positive effect. At Johns Hopkins, researchers specifically measured their checklist’s effect on teamwork. Eleven surgeons had agreed to try it in their cases—seven general surgeons, two plastic surgeons, and two neurosurgeons. After three months, the number of team members in their operations reporting that they “functioned as a well-coordinated team” leapt from 68 percent to 92 percent. At the Kaiser hospitals in Southern California, researchers had tested their checklist for six months in thirty-five hundred operations. During that time, they found that their staff’s average rating of the teamwork climate improved from “good” to “outstanding.” Employee satisfaction rose 19 percent. The rate of OR nurse turnover—the proportion leaving their jobs each year—dropped from 23 percent to 7 percent. And the checklist appeared to have caught numerous near errors. In

AI-powered analytics can provide predictive insights about employee turnover, helping HR to develop retention strategies proactively. Similarly, AI can support performance management by analyzing employee performance data and providing recommendations for improvement.

So, what are some great questions to ask your potential employer? Here’s a list of ten questions we’d recommend you ask every time:   What have other employees done to succeed in this position? What is the average rate of job turnover in this position? The company as a whole? What do you most like - and least like - about working for this company? What is your management style, and how will we communicate with each other on a daily basis if I am hired? What training is provided to employees during and after onboarding? Are there any other resources employees are provided with for ongoing development and success? If I am hired, how will my performance be measured and evaluated over time? What specific factors will be looked at most carefully? How

description?” Frank asked patiently. “I’ve got sixty-five employees and a turnover

To Do Start with a conversation—a “stay interview.” Learn about your talented employees’ goals and what they love (or don’t love) about their work. Don’t stop with one chat. Talk (and listen!) daily, weekly, monthly. Develop a true relationship with every single person you hope to keep on your team. Hold “Alas Clinics”—opportunities to talk with others about talented people who have left your team lately. Why did they go? What role (if any) did you play in their leaving? How can you prevent more unwanted turnover? Think about who might be “loose in the saddle” (about ready to leave you); talk with them soon, and collaborate with them to get more of what they want and need from you, from the team, from their jobs. Go big picture. Ask yourself, “What kind of work environment do I want to create?” Then figure out what you need to do in order to make that vision come alive. Then—go do it!

To tear down silos, leaders must go beyond behaviors and address the contextual issues at the heart of departmental separation and politics. The purpose of this book is to present a simple, powerful tool for addressing those issues and reducing the pain that silos cause. And that pain should not be underestimated. Silos—and the turf wars they enable—devastate organizations. They waste resources, kill productivity, and jeopardize the achievement of goals. But beyond all that, they exact a considerable human toll too. They cause frustration, stress, and disillusionment by forcing employees to fight bloody, unwinnable battles with people who should be their teammates. There is perhaps no greater cause of professional anxiety and exasperation—not to mention turnover—than employees having to fight with people in their own organization. Understandably and inevitably, this bleeds over into their personal lives, affecting family and friends in profound ways.

while Koreans also are relatively group-oriented, they also have a strong individualistic streak like most Westerners. Koreans frequently joke that an individual Korean can beat an individual Japanese, but that a group of Koreans are certain to be beaten by a group of Japanese.”36 The rate of employee turnover, raiding of other companies’ skilled labor, and the like are all higher in Korea than in Japan.37 Anecdotally, there would seem to be a lower level of informal work-oriented socializing in Korea than in Japan, with employees heading home to their families at the end of the day rather than staying on to drink in the evenings with their workmates.38

When you think of the amount of turnover and profit made by most companies in this country - and especially the big chains, it's a shame that they pay their employees minimum wage and no more than that. What that really says is: 'We're paying you minimum wage, because we're not allowed to pay you any less.

That’s what happened at Ford, for example. In 1914, Henry Ford famously raised his starting wage to $5 a day (nearly $120 in today’s dollars). He had to: turnover at Ford in 1913 had been 370 percent.37 In order to find and keep the workers who were assembling his increasingly profitable cars, Ford had to be willing to outbid his competitors (which included not only other car makers, but every other employer bidding for his prospective employees).

Exacerbating this problem is the problem of employee turnover—commonly, the original developers of the models have moved to another job before problems develop. After a number of years, organizations need to take steps to ensure that someone still understands every model that is in production.

The Path of the 99% Purely, statistically speaking (and nothing personal intended), it is almost certain you won’t make an investment in a franchise either. You will probably complain about the way things are, dream about what could be, take a brief stand for yourself by declaring, “I am tired placing my future in the hands of others. Now it’s my turn!” Then you’ll Google franchise opportunities, visit franchisor homepages, gather stacks of franchisor brochures, research companies, talk to people and professionals you trust, and have conversations with franchisors. You’ll feel proactive. You’ll tell your friends you’re considering buying a business. Chances are they thought about it, too. Some will be happy for you, some will be jealous, some will be afraid for you. Virtually everyone will share their strong opinions with you. You’ll dream about what it would be like to be your own boss. You’ll think about your customers and employees. You’ll make clever little charts such as the T Bar, where you neatly list all the pros on the left side of the page, balanced by the cons on the right side. Then the time will come to make a decision. Fear, doubt, and negative self-chatter (yours, your spouse’s, your kids’, your parents,’ your friends’, and your hired professionals’) will kick into high gear. Eventually, you probably will make a fear-based “no” decision, backed by the logic of your neatly listed cons. “The business has fatal flaws,” you think, “Employee turnover is too high. Competition is too fierce. The business is too risky. Sure, it may work in some areas, but everyone knows our town is different.” And with everything going on in your life, the timing couldn’t be worse. Yes, you are being completely responsible with your resources. You didn’t work this hard and long and sacrifice this much to lose what you’ve earned and saved. Moving forward with a franchise would put your family in danger. If you leave your company, you will lose your insurance benefits and 401(k). What if someone in your family had to go to hospital? How would you survive without insurance? Plus, your industry is changing so fast, in a few years your expertise would be obsolete and it would be impossible for you to regain entry if your business didn’t make it. Certainly almost every reasonable person armed with the same research and faced with the same personal challenges you have would naturally come to the same conclusion. And you are right. 99 percent do.

We all need mental health breaks. We give new parents leave to be with their newborns. We give people sick leave. Bereavement time. It’s all a part of life. You can’t ignore the human aspect of having employees. I’ve found over the years that we’ve had less turnover, and happier employees, when we just give people a chance to be human. Take the time, please.

Waste levels Logistics: Schedule accuracy On time delivery percentage Average time to deliver Inventory accuracy Human resources: Employee turnover Average time to fill a position Cost per hire Employee satisfaction/engagement index Absenteeism Salary competitiveness factor Training return on investment Corporate social responsibility: Carbon and water footprints Energy consumption Product recycling rate Waste recycling rate

The original idea, favored by Jack Welch, former CEO of GE, was that every company should aim for a certain level of turnover, whatever the consequences. The system was rife with perverse incentives. Peers who sabotaged others’ work could save their own jobs; managers might hire less-capable people on their teams to keep from having to fire existing employees whom they favored. Despite the system’s drawbacks, Welch’s influence was so far-reaching that stack ranking was adopted at many of today’s tech giants, where it wreaked havoc on morale and productivity for decades. Eventually, its negative effects became well known enough to make the practice a liability at companies chasing workers whose specialized talents made them scarce, such as engineers. In the mid-2010s, companies including Google, Microsoft, and Amazon abandoned it.

Companies with a culture of employee recognition, where employees feel that their contributions matter, perform better and have less employee turnover than those that don’t.

I feel like we’ve created a good culture. I try to offer the best of benefits to my employees and never pay a man more than a woman. I think it shows in the longevity of my employees as well. I have a fairly low turnover rate,

employee when the complaint comes to them. Think how demoralizing it must be for the security officer to be unable to perform a simple task spontaneously, especially if 10 minutes later he is instructed to do the thing he would have done anyway. Only now he looks stupid and ineffective to the customer. Multiply this embarrassment and lack of autonomy by many events in a day, and we are faced with the turnover of excellent employees.

Because employees know they have to leave by 5:30 p.m., wasted time has dropped to a minimum. Productivity is high and turnover is low.

I told them I wanted them to prepare by creating a list of discussion points to bring to our meetings. I wanted them to think about what they or the other managers in this room could do to improve the efficiency, productivity, customer service, cash flow, margin of errors, corporate culture, rate of employee turnover, employee morale, and, most important, the company’s profitability.

Ask about turnover rates. The average turnover rate at US companies is between 11 and 12 percent. Some industries have lower rates and others much higher. Ask your interviewers how long they have worked for the company and the length of time people in the department you’re interested in have worked for the company. Ask about the history of the position you are interviewing for. Have other people been in this role, or is it newly created? If it’s an existing job, ask why the last person left,

Companies consistently confuse the disease of bad culture with symptoms like tech overuse and high employee turnover.

This is another part of the special expertise of the ST. The CIA would use secrecy and need-to-know control to arrange with a Cabinet-level officer for the cover assignment of an Agency employee to that organization, for example to the Federal Aviation Administration. The Cabinet officer would agree without too much concern and quietly tip off his manpower officer to arrange a “slot” (personnel space) for someone who would be coming into a certain office. He would simply say that the “slot would be reimbursed,” and this would permit the FAA to carry a one-man overage in its manning tables. Soon the man would arrive to work in that position. As far as his associates would know, he would be on some special project, and in a short time he would have worked so well into the staff that they would not know that he was not really one of them. Turnover being what it is in bureaucratic Washington, it would not be too long before everyone around that position would have forgotten that it was still there as a special slot. It would be a normal FAA-assigned job with a CIA man in it.