March 5, 2024
Beyond the Carrot and Stick: Why Traditional Discipline Systems are Failing our Workplaces
For decades, workplaces have relied on a familiar disciplinary playbook: warnings, write-ups, and even suspensions. The reality is the term “discipline” is associated with punishing people. This “punishment-based”approach may seem straightforward, but in today’s evolving work world, it’s proving increasingly ineffective and frustrating for everyone involved. In fact, it’s time we acknowledge the flaws in this traditional system and explore more positive, productive alternatives to managing performance.
January 15, 2024
What Is Employee Turnover Cost & How To Retain Employees
Employee turnover is a pressing issue businesses across all industries face, especially regarding your organization’s finances. Many studies have concluded that a high employee turnover cost can severely impact an organization’s profitability and reputation. A high turnover rate leads to losing valuable employees and can make existing employees demotivated or insecure in their jobs.
If your business is experiencing the effects of high turnover costs, it’s crucial to find out and address the reasons why. Understanding the underlying causes fueling employee turnover and developing strategies to promote employee retention is an excellent place to start.
What Is Employee Turnover and Employee Turnover Cost?
Employee turnover occurs when an employee leaves your organization and is replaced by a new employee. This includes employees who leave voluntarily (such as quitting for new job offers, becoming a stay-at-home parent, or entering retirement) and involuntarily (such as termination or layoffs).
Employee turnover rates are a key metric determining workforce effectiveness and satisfaction. You can measure your business’ employee turnover rate by accounting for the number of employees who leave your organization within a certain period. High turnover rates can signify an issue with employee satisfaction and your business work environment.
When an employee leaves, plenty of costs go into replacing them with a new employee. Employee turnover cost refers to the financial resources your organization spends to get the replacement employee ready to take over the tasks of the old one.
What Costs Go Into Employee Turnover Cost?
We can generally categorize the various turnover costs into three types:
- Separation costs include the expenses and resources used to conduct exit interviews and provide severance pay and other payouts to the employee leaving the company.
- Replacement costs are generally the hiring and training costs of finding a replacement. This includes advertising your job openings, conducting interviews and background checks, and onboarding tasks such as orientation and training.
- Productivity loss covers the non-monetary resources used to replace an employee. For instance, if it takes several months to replace an employee, other employees will need to shoulder their tasks until a replacement is found. This can affect employee productivity and morale.
On top of the financial costs, such as those for recruitment, onboarding, and training, your business should also consider productivity, engagement, and morale. Additionally, the disruption of turnover could affect customer service, which could result in a loss of business.
Reasons for High Employee Turnover
There are many reasons why employees leave the workplace. However, a high employee turnover rate signifies something is driving employees away from your organization. While the reasons can vary, some of the most common reasons include:
- Poor Compensation Packages: A competitive salary and benefits package can motivate employees to stay. If your salary range for a position is lower than other companies, employees may search for better opportunities elsewhere.
- Limited Growth and Development: Many employees aren’t satisfied with staying in the same position forever. If your organization doesn’t offer regular training, skill development, or promotions to fill vacant positions, employees interested in career growth will look elsewhere for career opportunities.
- Ineffective Management: There’s a famous saying that employees quit bosses, not jobs, which can be true in cases of high turnover. Unsupportive management can result in a hostile working environment that drives employees to leave.
- No Work-Life Balance: A demanding work environment that leaves little to no time for employees to have a personal life can easily lead to burnout. Employees may be driven to seek workplaces with better work-life balance.
- Unmanaged Job Expectations: Employees may feel unsuited or unprepared in their roles if they aren’t adequately oriented or their tasks don’t match their job description. They may opt to find other jobs that match their skills and expectations.
- Toxic Workplace Culture: A hostile workplace can distract employees or hinder their ability to perform. This can lead to high turnover as they look for better working environments.
Ways To Improve Employee Retention
Focusing on employee retention can help reduce your turnover rate and mitigate the effects of high employee turnover costs. When done correctly, these strategies can improve employee retention:
- Competitive Compensation and Benefits: Research the average market salary of a position and consider at least matching the average salary. Closely evaluate your benefits packages. On top of the government-mandated benefits, most organizations today offer additional bonuses, benefits, or retirement plans.
- Provide Growth and Development Opportunities: Employees can appreciate access to skills growth and career development. Providing regular upskilling and training programs, including access to online resources, can improve productivity, management, and other essential workplace skills. Additionally, providing career paths and inward mobility can encourage employees to seek career advancement opportunities internally.
- Open Communication Channels: Providing employees with an avenue to communicate can boost trust and loyalty in the workplace. This allows employees to feel heard and understood by upper management.
- Work-Life Balance Policies: This can include improving your time off policies, encouraging employees to leave their work in the office, and providing resources for mental and emotional well-being.
- Fostering a Positive Work Environment: When hiring employees, consider whether their working style, communication, and teamwork skills can blend into a positive work environment. Recognizing hard workers and encouraging employees to communicate their questions and concerns to the right people.
- Improve Onboarding: Poor onboarding processes can cause new hires to leave as early as six months into the role. Set up your new employees for success by acclimating them to the company, the team, and responsibilities.
Partner With HPWP To Create a Positive Work Environment
Employee turnover cost has a significant impact on an organization’s success. Thus, it should be a priority for organizations to reduce turnover and improve employee satisfaction. By understanding the costs and reasons for turnover, companies can better manage turnover, enhance overall productivity, and set themselves up for long-term success.
At HPWP, we understand the best strategies to create a positive, high-performance workplace. We can assist your business with personalized hiring and employee retention training solutions. Get in touch with us today to find out how we can boost your employee retention.
November 8, 2023
The 3 Types of Workplace Flexibility Employees Are Looking For
“Work-life balance” is a term that’s used more often in the current landscape. We are now in a post-pandemic era, a time when most employees have experienced the pros and cons of working remotely from home – and going by consensus, the pros of remote work have won over many employers. This resulted in a “hybrid” work setup now widely prevalent in the corporate world and other industries where work-from-home is applicable.
This article discusses the flexibility that workers today expect from their employers, especially from industries that are now tried and tested to be compatible with remote and hybrid work arrangements.
What Is Workplace Flexibility?
Workplace flexibility is an umbrella term used to describe work arrangements where employees enjoy some freedom to decide when, where, and how they will deliver their work. It’s not a new or revolutionary concept. In fact, “telecommuting” and “telework,” terms used synonymously with work flexibility, were coined by Jack Niles in 1972 to describe his work arrangement at NASA, where he performed his tasks from various locations via telecommunications equipment.
Today, work flexibility often refers to three essential areas.
3 Types of Work Flexibility
In modern employment discussions, flexibility often refers to three things:
- Flexible Location
In light of digital advancements and the availability of the Internet, remote work flexibility has become a compelling alternative to a traditional office setup. Many employees and job seekers today seek the freedom to work from home to combat the arduous challenges of a daily commute.
Hours spent in transit to and from the workplace not only drain energy but also eat into personal time. Whether driving or riding public transport, commuting is a tremendous source of daily stress for working adults. With remote work, employees can start working on time or earlier when their physical and mental energy is at its peak.
By allowing remote work and giving the freedom to work from home or other alternative locations, employers can demonstrate their commitment to supporting work-life balance and helping their employees achieve this. It empowers individuals to manage their personal and professional lives better and achieve balance in the way that works best for them.
- Flexible Hours
The second area that workers expect to have some freedom with when talking about flexible working conditions is the hours. Having a rigid daily schedule is becoming less appealing as more households are choosing to integrate work and school into their everyday home lives (again, as a result of the societal changes that stemmed from the global pandemic). Employers will find that many parents want more time in the morning to get their kids ready for school, for example. Some may even need the entire morning off to supervise homeschooling.
A traditional work setting imposes rigid time structures that can clash with an individual’s non-work commitments. After enjoying flexible work hours during the pandemic, and if the rest of their family members and friends currently work on flexible hours, the prospect of reporting for work on a fixed schedule can cause friction in personal relationships, heighten stress, and make work-life balance difficult. Employees today seek flexibility in their work hours to adapt their schedules to their unique lifestyles and personal obligations.
- Compressed Workweek
A five-day workweek is the convention and is widely practiced until now. With flexible work hours becoming more acceptable, it appears that a compressed workweek of four days is also becoming popular. Companies in Belgium, Portugal, Germany, the UK, and other European countries are already testing out shorter work weeks, and they are seeing many positive results.
Many employees grapple with fatigue and burnout due to extended workdays. Not only do they have to work five or six days a week, but sometimes they also extend by 30 minutes to an hour to finish their daily work.
The compressed workweek model offers a progressive solution. By giving employees the option to condense their total weekly work hours into fewer days, they are empowered to work more efficiently and finish work (and keep their output at a high quality) earlier instead of later. This flexibility also allows employees to enjoy more consecutive days off, giving them a bigger chunk of time for interests outside of work. Because they have a longer gap between workdays, employees can recharge better and return to work with a more positive attitude.
The Benefits of Work Flexibility
We’ve already touched on several benefits of allowing flexibility in location, working hours, and workdays, but here are more reasons to adopt these modern arrangements in the workplace:
- High morale and employee satisfaction
- High productivity
- Improved workplace culture and better employee engagement
- Improved physical and mental health
- Increased employee retention and low turnover rates
- Fewer PTO requests
- Lower risk of illness in the workplace
- Improved production efficiency and faster turnarounds
- Stronger talent acquisition
- More applications and acceptances from top talents
The Growth of Workforce Flexibility
It’s remarkable how, only three years ago, such flexibility was so rare most people would only associate remote work with travel photographers, consultants, marketers, and content creators who chase work from one physical location to another. This is because workforce flexibility goes against the norms of corporate culture wherein supervisors demand constant visibility over their subordinates eight hours a day, seven days a week. However, the pandemic years taught us the importance of work-life balance and that work flexibility is essential for achieving that.
Employers today must understand that workers are now choosing workplace flexibility over salary. According to data from McKinsey’s American Opportunity Survey in 2022, 87% of employees will take the chance to enjoy flexible work arrangements.
Of course, not all jobs are suitable for remote work. Some prefer working on-site because they work better in an office setting, don’t have the proper equipment at home, or simply because the nature of their job requires them to be at the workplace (i.e., production or manufacturing technician). But for positions that can be performed from anywhere in the world, such as tech and IT, journalism, marketing, virtual assistance, professional services, etc., employers can expect top candidates to want at least some flexibility.
Are You Flexible Enough for Your Employees?
As a business owner or employer, it will be beneficial in the long run to explore workforce flexibility and apply it whenever possible in your company. But if you are trying to figure out how to enforce remote work while ensuring no one compromises on efficiency and quality, leadership and workforce management experts can help.
HPWP Group helps companies discover their strengths and develop strategies to maximize human resources without sacrificing work-life balance. We offer coaching, training, and consulting services to help business organizations reach their highest potential.
Discover how much autonomy you can afford to give your employees, given the nature of your business and the work you need to deliver to your customers. Contact HPWP Group today.
October 30, 2023
It’s Impossible to Explain: Administering Punishment to Adults
We’re smart people so it’s impossible to explain why, in the world of HR and management, we still find ourselves mired in the age-old tradition of punishing employees for their shortcomings. It’s a question that’s been on our minds lately, and we can’t help but challenge the prevailing norms. We believe there’s a better way, a more progressive and respectful approach to dealing with performance and behavior issues in the workplace. One of the ways to administer corrective behavior is to develop a performance improvement plan. We’ll discuss more about the pros and cons of a performance improvement plan and how that affects an employee’s outlook.
May 31, 2023
It’s Impossible to Explain – Managing Hybrid/Remote Work Part III
Several times we’ve talked about how remote work is being monitored by software and over-controlled by policies. The stated outcome for doing this is the desire to assure people are being productive. But what are they measuring?
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May 6, 2023
It’s Impossible to Explain – Managing Hybrid/Remote Work
It’s Impossible to Explain – Managing Hybrid/Remote Work
One of our family members is working remotely 100% of the time. Her company fully supports this as a remote position BUT has written a number of policies to assure productivity and efficiency. For example:
- Two 15-minute breaks are granted per day at specific times as well as a 30-minute lunch break. She must log in and out. The policy states that if an employee is “unresponsive”, they will be listed in the system as MIA with an associated code of TIME OFF NO PAY which, the company states, will impact overall performance.
April 4, 2023
It’s Impossible to Explain – the Progressive Disciplinary Process
Sadly, the progressive disciplinary process is alive and well. And, by progressive, I mean a series of actions that expect an employee’s performance to get better while treating them progressively worse. (A good friend of ours who is unfamiliar with this draconian approach to dealing with people thought progressive meant “advanced” or “cutting-edge”.) He was shocked to learn that this punitive practice is a common approach to dealing with adults on performance issues. (more…)
March 1, 2023
It’s Impossible to Explain – How We Treat People During Layoff’s
It seems more and more often, things occur that are impossible to explain.
Here’s an example. Amid the mass layoffs currently occurring, one long-term employee posted her recent layoff experience on LinkedIn. She did not do this to argue specifically with the decision – but wanted to take the opportunity to say goodbye and thank those she had worked with for so many years.
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September 22, 2022
Have you decided to “quietly quit”?
An article about quiet quitting was recently the most read story all week at the Wall Street Journal website. Wanting to know more, I watched Michael Smirconish interview Paige West, a former engineering consultant who left the corporate world and has many YouTube videos on the subject. In this interview, she is clear that the quitting part of silent quitting does not mean doing the minimum at work – at least for her. She states it is letting go of the stress of trying to do 1000% in an attempt to move up the corporate ladder and – instead — looking for fulfillment. (more…)