$16,000. That's the average cost to replace a worker in the United States.
The job market today is one of the most competitive ones that we've seen in years, and employee retention is a problem that many companies are facing.
By finding ways to reduce or eliminate employee turnover in your sales team, you can set your company up for success.
In this post, we're going to go through what causes employee turnover, how it impacts your business, and how to solve it.
What is Employee Turnover?
Employee turnover is the measurement of the number of employees who leave an organization during a specified period, typically one year.
Essentially, it measures the number of employees that have left your organization either voluntarily or involuntarily.
Employee Turnover Rate is the number of employees lost divided by the starting number of employees, multiplied by 100 to get the percentage.
(# employees lost/ # total employees) * 100 = Employee turnover rate
What does employee turnover look like in your business?
High employee turnover takes a toll on any organization, but even more so on smaller companies. Having high employee turnover on your team means that you're spending a lot of time (and money) recruiting, hiring, and training new employees. This process is very taxing and can wear you down to continue to go through it again and again with new employees.
Main Causes of Employee Turnover
There are two types of employee turnover, voluntary, when an employee quits, and involuntary, when an employee is fired or laid off.
Common Causes of Voluntary Employee Turnover
- Employees tend to seek out new opportunities when they are unhappy with their current position or company.
- They can feel underpaid, underappreciated, or overworked.
- Employees also tend to seek out other jobs when they do not get along with management or do not fit into the company culture.
- Another common cause is an employee feeling that they "do not have a future" at the company or a lack of upward mobility or the inability to earn a promotion.
Common Causes of Involuntary Employee Turnover
The most common cause of an employee being let go is performance. In a sales related position, this could be not hitting quotas or bids in a given time frame. If an employee isn't living up to their goals, they do not typically stay around for long.
There are also other reasons for firing employees. These can be due to their attitude, the way they work with the rest of the team or their impact on the company culture.
Why is Employee Turnover Bad for your Business?
The constant stream of employees leaving and being replaced can have a variety of negative impacts on your business.
As we mentioned earlier, employee turnover is extremely expensive. From recruiting, hiring, and training, a new employee could cost your organization thousands of dollars. This is the direct monetary cost, but there are also costs in the form of opportunity costs.
Instead of focusing on growing the business or other revenue-producing activities, you are spending your time dealing with the hiring and training process. You could miss out on deals and opportunities to increase revenue, creating an even larger cost to your business.
Not only are there monetary and opportunity costs that come along with employee turnover, but it has a drastic impact on the company culture and morale.
If your team constantly sees people coming and going, they may become disheartened themselves. They may believe that there is a problem with you, the company, or management rather than a problem with the specific employee. You do not want your great employees to be anything less than in love with working for your company.
How to Reduce Employee Turnover
Reducing employee turnover in your organization should be a priority. Here are a few ways that you can accomplish this.
Create a standardized training process
One major cause of performance issues is a lack of proper training.
Research shows that companies that utilize a structured onboarding process are 58% more likely to keep employees for 3 years or more.
Using a well-thought-out onboarding process increases employee engagement, helps them feel more a part of the team, and shows that the company is invested in their success.
Empowering Employees with Easy-to-Use Technology
A major part of a great training process is empowering employees with the knowledge and tools they need to succeed.
Especially in residential and construction sales industry, the training process can be quite complex and include learning large libraries of products and complex formulas to calculate the cost of jobs. In these types of positions, new employees are expected to draw site plans, create customer estimates, and calculate product costs.
By using an easy-to-use drawing and estimating tool that can allow employees to create professional drawings and calculated estimates or reports at once, you can improve performance from day one and reduce turnover.
A proven training solution
If you're looking to learn how to train and retain your employees, you need to take a look at our Ultimate Guide to Building Your Residential Sales Team.
We've also seen clients reduce their onboarding timeline from 6 months to 3 days by utilizing ArcSite's product libraries and intuitive interface.
ArcSite combines the power and accuracy of CAD with the ability to produce a professional estimate with just a few taps on your iPad.
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