Reasons for employee attrition
1. Voluntary redundancy
Voluntary redundancy is the number one reason forstaffattrition.It’s a natural workforce flow that includes leaving the company because of retirement,health issues,moving to another city, studying, family reasons, or passing away.
2. Company’s initiative
In exceptional cases, companies initiate the dismissal of employees.Common reasons for involuntary redundancy includecompany’s mergers and acquisitions,staffdownsizing,structural replacements,employee’s misconduct,or violation of corporate rules.
3. Industry specifics
For some industries, it’s natural to experience higher attrition and turnover rates because of seasonal work, high-volume hiring,contractor work.Such industries includeecommerce, construction,agriculture, and hospitality.Thesebusinessestendto haveseasonal spikes, so they employmuch of their workforce on a short-term, contract basis.As a result, businesses in this niche
4. Internal attrition
This kind ofstaffattrition is probably the most positive among all the other ones. When employees join another departmentor move to another country or city to work for anothercompany’sbranch, it’s considered internal attrition.
5. Lack of diversity
The recentsurvey byGlassdoorshows that 76% ofemployees and job seekers assess companies by their workforcediversity and inclusion.Diversity impactspersonnelattritionas well.
Sometimes it makes sense to pay attention to demographic specifics of employees that decide to leave your companyand analyze how you can improve your working conditions for them.Here are some of the diversitytypes to consider:
- Racial (for example, do you have equal right for, Asian people?)
- Age (do you mitigate ageism at your workplace?)
- Gender (do you have an equal number of women and men on top management positions?)
- Disability (do you provide comfortable and safe working conditions for people with disabilities?)
- Cultural diversity (do you encourage open-minded attitude towards different cultures?)
How to deal with high attrition rates at your company
Optimize the onboarding process
Did you know that positive employee onboarding experience increases your chances toretain workforce up to 82%?
Unfortunately, onboarding often fails because HR managers share incorrect information about working conditions, responsibilities, and corporate culture during candidate interviews.Or, after a candidate joins the company, there’s lack of mentor supportor help from colleagues to aid newcomers in performing their duties well.
Here’s how you can improve your onboarding process to make your employees stay with you longer:
- Set the right expectations about your organization and current employees, so everyone feels comfortable dealing with diverse cultures, ages, and so on.
- Provide a clear roadmap to starting a job at your company from the day one. You can automate the onboarding process with tools that help you build checklists and wiki notes. As a result, you’ll be able to scale your onboarding flow with other HR managers and newcomers to the company.
- Involve line managers to the onboarding process as they’re the most competent and aware of all working details. This initiative also helps build a mentorship culture, where managers work towards employee development and retention.
Avoid laying off completely
Sometimes you need to lay off your employees due to unexpected crisis or seasonal stagnancy.However, you can always make a compromise like offering a temporary pay reduction,switching employees to a part-time job,offering unpaid vacations,or moving them to less-paid roles within a company for a specific period.
When COVID-19 hit in spring, most of hospitality and restaurant businesses opted for similar measures to keep their workforce in place and still function, even though with lower turnover.
Go for long-term hiring
Make it clear: once you hire an employee, you’ll do your best to make your cooperation last.Demonstrate your reliability with transparent career development roadmaps, learning initiatives to help employeesreach their professional goals, and regular feedback like NPS.
Once you notice the signs of high attrition, it makes sense to survey your employees at a company-wide level or organize1:1meetingsto sync uppersonallyand determinewellbeing of your workforce.
In conclusion
It’s important to distinguish employee attrition fromstaffturnover. Even though these terms basically mean the staff reduction, attrition defines a natural employee flow within a company due to retirement, passing away, moving to another place. Sometimes, negative factors like downsizing or lack of diversity impactstaffattrition as well.
To track employee statistics manually is a daunting process. Here atHRForecast, we offer a variety of HR analytics tools to help you securely gather, store, and analyze valuable workforce data.Check them outordrop us a lineto find out about our customizable HR solutions.
