Why Companies Need More Attrition and Not Less
Roberta Matuson
Strategic Advisor on Talent | Global Executive Coach | Public Speaker I Brand Ambassador | HBR Contributor I Helping organizations attract & retain the best people.
Are you serious about upgrading your workforce? If so, then listen up.
Companies working towards being the best in class have a strategy that may sound counter-intuitive to you. They're not worried about losing people. In fact, they're making it a point to increase employee turnover.
Crazy, right? You can't get people, and these companies are culling people and removing them from their organizations.
What do they know that you don't?
Not every hire is a great hire. Look, I'm an expert at employee selection. Yet, candidates still manage to get by me. Imagine how many people slip by those who have no clue what they're doing in terms of employee selection.
I don't spend a lot of time dwelling on this, nor do the organizations who are best in class. Acknowledge when a mistake has been made and quickly take action.
It's not healthy to breathe your own exhaust. Ever wonder why you hear the same ideas over and over again? Companies who never change out their players are not allowing fresh ideas to permeate throughout the organization. Continue to do this, and your company will be DOA.
Good hires can go bad. I used to be a star employee for a company. That is until my boss started ignoring me. It seemed like he really didn't care about me anymore, so I started caring less and less about him. Yet, he allowed me to stay, even though I was clearly underperforming.
Companies who believe in healthy attrition regularly evaluate their workers. They don't wait until review time. They do this daily.
Stop spending so much time trying to keep people who shouldn't be kept. Instead, focus on hiring and retaining employees who are on their way up, rather than those who are on a downward spiral.
? Matuson Consulting, 2019.
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There is no doubt that many organizations keep low performers around too long. The right employee can have multiples of the positive benefit of a poor employee. However, it takes work to move somebody out and the process, depending on the manager's temperament, can be unpleasant. We often wait until the big layoff to do anything.? To actually improve the organization by intentional attrition takes a special organization. The new hires have to be better than the old ones. That means the management team has to be capable of- and willing to focus on selecting better candidates. They are often already overworked and not technically qualified to do that and end up hiring based on irrelevant characteristics. The first step might be to actually select management (and train them) based on their ability to identify talent. How well do performance evaluations they've made hold up over time? How would you know? Hiring is also expensive and takes time away from other activities. More importantly, in many roles, especially those rather unique to your firm, a new person is almost by definition incompetent for a period of time. They require enculturation and training by peers, by management, and by those they supervise. Is the cost and lost productivity caused by the churn worth the benefit? One more thing. The environment generated by some efforts to upgrade the workforce can be toxic, or at least it can be perceived as toxic by those in the pool subject to the culling. You can lose your best current performers just because they don't like working under those conditions. It takes a toll. If you make one mistake, say because a manger with less than stellar competence or integrity gets rid of the wrong person and hires a new one based on irrelevant characteristics who turns out to be? worse, the herd will notice and the more mobile ones will move to new pastures and others will spend much of their energy just looking for new pastures. Do it, but do it for the right reasons and you had better be good at it or you could create exactly the opposite of what you desire.
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5 年Translation:? Employees have no value, they're just cost center, so cut costs by attrition.? Dehumanizing philosophy at work here.?
Senior repackaging and compounding technician at Beaumont Health
5 年Perhaps, if the employer viewed the employee as "valuable" instead of a "resource", the time and cost of properly training a new employee would pay off with great dividends over an extended period. Your approach seems to demonstrate a mindset of using resources (people)? to accomplish a monetary "reward".? Employers who "create" leaders are never wanting for great, loyal, productive employees.
Independent freelancer
5 年It’s a nice perspective, the employer and employee do reflect on choices made by each of them, further in a dynamic situation of business it is necessary to re look the decisions made. However, I doubt any study to validate this findings have been done. Further, the loyal employer template suits the companies in the long run. It’s the employees who have to smarten up
Management Consultant at Free-Lance Consultant
5 年So true . I experience it so very often . Think we made a great selection , but once again it turns out to be a nightmare . And we go for a repeat performance .