Turnover threatening to overtake hiring? How to restore balance, retain more top talent

Some of the biggest pain points HR pros like you have been managing since the pandemic are related to hiring and turnover.

Knowing why people join your company, and why they leave, has to be at the heart of your HR strategy, according to BambooHR CEO Brad Rencher.

“We are attracted to companies for what they say they have, but we end up leaving because of what they don’t have. And as HR professionals, that’s really on us to figure out what is the difference between what we say we have and the reality of what’s missing,” he said in a presentation during the 2022 BambooHR Virtual Summit.

Rencher gave examples of the multiple data sets you can look at to gain insight, such as:

• Number of people hired
• Number of people who quit because they don’t like their manager, don’t see opportunities for promotion or growth, or are taking a better-paying job
• Average length of employment
• Midyear and/or annual performance reviews
• Exit interviews, and
• Areas where the company is and isn’t hiring.

Intangible influences on hiring, turnover

But data isn’t the only thing you should be using to help balance your hiring to turnover ratio.

Because we’re in what Rencher calls an “employee experience era,” to close the gap between why people are joining and why they’re leaving, it’s even more important to check the pulse of your company culture by observing, evaluating and leveraging:

• The core organizational values that enable teams to get through tough moments big (e.g., a pivot to remote work) and small (e.g., business communication when a deliverable is really late).
• How employees respond to conflict. How many embrace conflict by speaking up, then moving on? Who’s more inclined to value structure and ask, “What does the handbook say about it?” How many avoid conflict and prefer to concentrate on a relationship being OK? Each type brings value to an organization.
• How easy/hard it is for new team members to integrate with an existing team.

If your core values include “follow through on what you say you’ll do” or “admit your mistakes and learn from them,” make sure they’re actually being practiced in the workplace and make a point of sharing those values with prospective employees. A strong company culture is attractive to job seekers and employees are more likely to stay if they feel their values and the employer’s values align.

Rencher shared an onboarding practice implemented at BambooHR during COVID that’s paid dividends in helping new hires build bonds of trust with their co-workers. “One of our managers … took care to introduce each new employee to every person personally. She would set up the Zoom meeting, she’d make the introduction and then hang on for a couple of minutes. Then she would leave so that employee could have a one-on-one with the person at the other end. It’s that human touch that wins,” he said.