Retain Employees – Ideas to Stop Excessive Turnover

Retaining employees has become as important as hiring employees.?Simply put, demand for labor is high and the supply is low (this is especially true in the vertical I recruit in which is Compliance Officers).

According to Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) the average hard cost to replace an employee is 9 months of her/his salary.??For the professionals we place at director and above levels that cost would be about $180,000 or more.?You may wish to read the above sentence again as it is not a typo.

Examples of direct turnover costs include:

• Exit processing
• Separation pay, benefits pay, and vacation pay
• Pre-Employment administration
• Possible 3rd party executive search fees
• Background checks?
• Possible relocation expense

Examples of indirect turnover costs include:

• Loss of institutional knowledge
• Decrease in survivor productivity & morale
• Possible damage to company reputation

Strategies to retain employees:

• Continuously provide challenging and meaningful work that aligns with talents and interest
• Develop opportunities to continuously learn and grow…note, this does not have to be a promotion
• Offer flexibility… increased productivity is directly proportionate to increased flexibility
• Compensate fairly…continuously update salary to inflation and current Fair Market Value for new hires

Become a great leader:

• Develop trust, honesty, fairness
• Defend your staff when needed
• Develop leadership among your staff
• Support staff when an honest mistake happens…we learn more from our mistakes than our successes
• Recognize staff within your group and throughout the organization
• Providing constructive feedback should be done privately not in front of others

Maurice Gilbert is Founding Partner of Conselium Compliance Executive Search, which specializes in placing Compliance Officers and Legal Counsel for clients in the U.S., Europe, Latin America and Asia Pacific. Maurice is also CEO of Corporate Compliance Insights, a worldwide publication devoted to governance, risk and compliance issues. Maurice can be reached at [email protected]

Maurice's Linked-In page is: https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/mauricegilbert/