Let's Talk About Staff Turnover (LOUD GROAN)
TraceWorthy Consulting
Specialising in establishing and developing both foreign and locally owned businesses of every description in Indonesia.
There is a phenomenon business owners tend not to talk about – staff turnover.? It is that grubby part of business that none of us enjoy and that we would gladly avoid if we could.
We do our best during a recruitment process.? We spend a great deal of time crafting an advertisement with the goal of attracting numerous quality candidates. We pre-screen, interview, shortlist and interview again, narrowing several hundred applicants down to a top three.?? Then, we select the candidate we think is best for the job.
Do we get it right??
Sometimes.
When we do get it right, the team is energised and productive.? Tasks seem effortless.? Clients are happy, pop into the office frequently and loyalty is evident through abundant referrals.
When we get it wrong, it can be extremely damaging.? Team morale falls through the floor.? Laziness creeps in.? Clients become frustrated, then stop communicating before they step away to never return.? Before long, the company’s reputation is trash.
The one “wrong” hire is like a cancer, festering and rotting the company from the inside out.
Then what?
A decision needs to be made – fast.? Stay or go?
Firing someone is a complicated and expensive legal process, even with probationary periods.? We know that disgruntled exiting employees can cause trouble for the company.? We know that we are going to cause more instability in the team.? ??We know that we are going to take a hit with the clients.
Stay or go?
?We have a no-grey-area trigger for firing someone.? If they are willing to learn and grow, we offer them an opportunity to stay, and we build systems and processes around them to support improvement.? If there is no demonstration of willingness, we pull the proverbial trigger.
We are onto our fifth Finance Manager in four years.? Why?
Our first Finance Manager was known to us, so we head hunted her.? She came out of the gate strong, producing what seemed to be quality work and delighting the clients.? Then something happened that caused a shift in her character.? We don’t know what it was, despite offering the space and time to assist with whatever was getting in the way of work.? Mistakes began showing up.? Her team whole began underperforming.? She seemed to antagonise and ?causing friction with other teams.? The team quickly responded by freezing her out.
She had to go.
It was a devastating blow to the company, especially as handover started revealing errors and inconsistencies in her and her team’s work. To compound matters, her team exited after her.
Our second Finance Manager was recruited through an online platform.? He seemed clever, had substantial experience and promised to develop a new team.? He picked up mistakes made by the last team.? He brought systems with him that would add value to ours.? Then, he actively refused to work to our ethics and standards.? He hid things he didn’t understand from the executive and from the clients.? We watched him unravel before our eyes.? I explicitly asked him if he was deliberately sabotaging my company.
He had to go.
Our third Finance Manager was also known to us.? His employer was closing down, and he was returning to the job market.? We saw this as an opportunity to grab someone with a good track record.? He too promised improved systems, a developed team of junior accountants, and happy, communicative clients.? The clients did like him a lot.? He was cheerful and friendly, and a great contributor to the team.? However, he was more intent on being liked than he was on getting the job done.? His team started getting lazy.? Deadlines were missed.? Cover ups were made.? There was no accountability present and no willingness to make amends.
He had to go.
This saw the exit of half of the second finance team, one junior accountant leaving with him.
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Our fourth Finance Manager was recruited from a field of over 200 applicants.? He appeared to be a brilliant man, considered and articulate.? He quickly picked up what was missed or missing and started correcting work. He was in constant communication with the executive and with the clients.? He was happy attending management team lunches and seemed to fit.? Then, when he began bringing discipline into the remaining finance team, they didn’t respond well.? Both junior accountants exited.? He couldn’t take the pressure of the March – April tax season and began to show signs of cracking.
He ran.
Our fifth Finance Manager was shortlisted at the time of hiring the fourth.? He had failed to communicate that he was going to miss a final interview due to his plane being delayed, so we wrote him off as not having the standard of communication we require.? The unexpected departure of our last prompted us to reach out to see if he was still in the market for a job.? He joined us within the week.? We hired a new junior accountant two days later.?
Whilst Finance Manager Number Five has only been with the company a few weeks, there is a new feel about the team, like change is coming.? He seems enthusiastic about the challenge of rebuilding our team, our client base, our reputation.? We are watching with bated breath.
Why share this with you, especially as it does not paint a glowing picture of the company?
There are two reasons for airing our dirty laundry.?
Firstly, we are better business owners when we talk through the tough stuff with other business owners.? We are adept at telling people how great things are going, and lousy at telling the truth. ?This causes isolation and often compounds the problem. We can learn from each other, and support each other along the way.
Secondly, we are giving you the opportunity to not go through what we have been through.? This works in two ways.? You can reflect on your hiring practices and check whether there might be some takeaways from our experiences.? And, you are reminded that outsourcing some of your back-of-office functions shields you from going through this yourself.? That is, we are one company recruiting accounting specialists that service many companies.? Imagine if each of our clients was expending scarce resources in ongoing recruitment processes for a part of their business that never makes money.? That would be a lot more inconvenient and expensive than hanging in there while we work it out on your behalf.
What did we learn along the way?
As I mentioned at the beginning of this article – sometimes we business owners have to do things we don’t like to do.? Sometimes, those things don’t go to plan and our companies suffer hardship as a result.?
Great companies get up and try again and try again and try again until they get it right.?
They learn from what worked and what didn’t work, and they don’t make the same mistake again.
Even though it looks like we have made the same mistake four times, we did not.? We made four different mistakes, and we learned something new each time.? Here is what we learned:
What else did we learn?
At the risk of sounding flippant – accountants are a dime a dozen.? Accountants with client facing experience are a rare breed.
We have worked out that an accountant who is competent managing the finances of a single entity cannot necessarily replicate that across multiple entities at the same time.? The vast majority of accountants never set up a system from scratch, even if they say that they can.? They tend to walk into jobs that have established systems, and they simply do what the last person did.? They might perform a little continuous quality improvement; however, it is unlikely they have ever performed a complete overhaul.? This is not enough for us.
We need more from our accountants.? We need innovators. We need problem solvers. ?We need multi-taskers. We need a team that is unstoppable in developing and delivering clear, balanced, understandable plus human-centred solutions for our clients.? We are unwilling to accept less than that.
I would like to leave you with these final words.?
You can have conversations with us about some of the hard things that happen when you own a business.?
Our team is your team.