Keeping track of turnover, no matter how big or small your business is, is an essential part of creating a workplace that is receptive to its employees and offers them a truly positive experience. If you want to keep improving your workplace environment, as well as your business’s success, you need to start tracking turnover and dig deeper to find out why employees choose to leave and what keeps them around.
Even if you know each and every person in your company, it can be difficult to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. Tracking turnover will allow you to lay out all the information surrounding employee departures, pinpoint specific issues, and perhaps even notice some patterns and trends. Your employees might each give a different reason for leaving but when you actually track turnover you can get a better idea of any patterns that may have played a role in their departure. For example, you might notice that several employees that have left recently, who all cited different reasons for doing so, worked directly under a specific person. By tracking turnover, you can pick up on these potential problems and start formulating a way to address them.
Turnover can be calculated by dividing the number of employees who left by your total number of employees but there are some different things you’ll want to consider depending on your individual business. If your business is stable, meaning it is neither growing or shrinking, you can divide the number of employees who left by the number of current employees. This will give you an accurate idea of how many employees leave each year and therefore how many new hires you will need to make.
Businesses that are experiencing a significant amount of growth should be tracking turnover by dividing the number of employees who left by the number of employees you started out with at the beginning of the period. Calculating your turnover this way will give you a more accurate reading since you have probably been adding numerous employees not just to cover the loss of the ones who left but because your business needs the extra help as it grows. Businesses that are shrinking can also use this method of turnover calculation.
After you’ve taken a look at the numbers, start separating your employee losses by those who quit and by those who were fired. Comparing these two numbers can help you uncover a few areas that need improvement. If you have a lot of employees that have chosen to leave, take a closer look at the reasons they cited for their departure and compare them to your current workplace environment to see what might need to be changed. If you have experienced a significantly higher rate of involuntary turnover, you could be hiring the wrong people for the job or management might be reacting too harshly to relatively minor issues.
Tracking turnover can be a huge benefit to your business because it allows you to analyze why your employees stay or go on a deeper level. When you have a better understanding behind your turnover rates, you can start to figure out what you need to do to make up for those employee losses and what improvements can be made for your current and new employees to keep turnover rates down.
