Attrition Proof your Business

Have you ever heard of this concept before? If not, that’s ok because honestly, it’s not completely accurate. Employee attrition is an inevitable occurrence. It is going to happen at some point. Especially within sales and marketing lines of business. Today, it’s not only individual contributors, but even key leaders that are only staying with companies on average of two years. In addition to that, with start-ups being established seemingly every hour on the hour, it makes it even harder to retain talent. My advice is to get used to this new reality because I see no turnaround in the near future. 

Granted, some of the reasons for attrition are uncontrollable. However, the ones driven by poor culture are very controllable. Culture in this context is referred to as the perceptions, motivations, and consistent "behaviors" that permeate an organization. Yes, culture is a behavior, not a feeling or an aspiration. Many companies struggle to establish environments that thrive on intrinsic motivation, innovation, autonomy, while at the same time yielding high levels of performance. The reason for this is because they simply don’t have an executable plan nor the accountability measures to achieve it. These plans require ownership, time, and skill. Sometimes organizations are just not serious enough about investing the resources into building a strong and sustainable culture. 

With that in mind, the best solution is to create what I refer to as the “Attrition Readiness Framework” The purpose of this is to mitigate the risk and business impact of an unexpected resignations. Whenever companies have to fill vacant positions, it creates a high propensity performance and revenue lag. There is often so much information, process, and tribal knowledge that walks right out the door, never to be recovered. Before I outline the framework, let’s take a look at a few of the soft costs of attrition.

• New hire costs: $4,500 on average 
• Ramp up time and training costs: Oftentimes, tenured employees are pulled away from core tasks to help serve as ambassadors for the new hire. This can impact overall productivity and create missed revenue opportunities.
• Cultural integration: Changing old habits and conforming to new methodologies take time (time is money - literally)

In considering these areas, companies should take an anticipatory approach in order to proactively minimize the prolonged effects of the above. Below are the components of the “Attrition Readiness Framework”. These must be documented and housed in a central repository 

• Position/Role Infrastructure Design
• Clearly defined responsibilities at a tactical level - remove the ambiguity from the role description 
• Document all of the viable resources required for the role
• People | Process | Tech
• Defined collaborative protocols
• Defined VSGM (Vision Strategy Goal Metrics) for the line of business 
• Qualitative KPIs 
• Measure and establish visibility into high impact functions 
• Adaptability (marry the goal, NOT the process)
• Be willing to quickly pivot away from people that don’t align with the culture and mission of the org (they will cost you more money the longer you keep them around)

There are outside resources that can aid you in this endeavor. Don’t create unnecessary anxiety over it or think that you have to go at it alone. 

~RK Johns