Introduction
The price of staff turnover for the company is sometimes very high. An employer affected by this problem needs to analyze the causes of its occurrence and find effective ways to prevent employee layoffs. High staff turnover may be due to employees leaving the enterprise of their own free will. They are fired for absenteeism, violation of safety regulations, unauthorized leaving, and other reasons not caused by production or national needs. The surveyed enterprise needs to identify the causes of high staff turnover rates. The reasons why people tend to change jobs can be divided into three types: loss of motivation, a desire to improve their status, a desire to increase income, and the possibility of implementing an exciting project in another company.
It should be noted that the latter type of causes is more typical for managers, engineering and technical workers, and partly for highly skilled workers. For most employees of companies of different directions, the first two types of reasons are more typical. In addition to the above reasons, essential factors affecting staff turnover are relationships in the team, the moral climate in the organization, as well as dismissals due to insufficient attention of employers to the desires of employees.
To identify the problem, it is necessary to carry out several measurements in the company. The simplest and most effective way is to count the laid-off employees as a percentage of all employees currently working. It is worth noting that the level of turnover varies depending on the specifics of the department. For example, among low-skilled personnel, there is a high turnover of personnel, in contrast to employees at the administrative and managerial levels. In this regard, the measurement should be divided into sections, departments, and divisions. It is essential to pay attention to the scope and age of the organization. So for a young company, the expected turnover will be higher than for an established business, and for retail or manufacturing enterprises, this figure can reach up to 25% (Shweta, 2022). In addition, the indicators of enterprises in the same field can be compared to determine how much the turnover rate goes beyond the norm. It is worth doing internal research to find out why people leave the organization. To do this, managers can begin to conduct an exit interview – a conversation with retiring employees. Preferably, the interviewer should not be the employee’s former supervisor or the person providing the employee with references. An alternative option would be a questionnaire survey.
For the implementation of any innovations, it is worth choosing the right system for their organization and introduction. According to Carman et al. (2019), implementing changes in a company to eliminate a problem can be effectively carried out using Kotter’s 8-Step Process for Leading Change. The first step in this model is to determine the urgency of the problem. The problem of staff turnover is a priority in solving the company’s problems because it can cause many other problems in the organization. Because of this, the issue must be resolved with the utmost sense of urgency. According to De Winne et al. (2019), high employee turnover seriously affects the company’s performance, so this problem should be the first priority in correcting. This study proves that the urgency of the problem is at a high level as the organization’s efficiency will decline due to increased turnover rates.
Reasons for High Employee Turnover Rates
To better understand the nature of the problem of staff turnover, it is worth analyzing the above reasons in more detail. Sometimes the desire of recruiters to fill a vacancy as quickly as possible can lead to hiring the wrong employee. Alternatively, during the selection, the applicant did not receive complete information about the job; subsequently, his expectations were not met (Astvik et al., 2020). However, even an employee hired due to all the requirements and selection parameters may not be satisfied with the management and its attitude towards the team. This may be a personal dislike for the leader and disagreement with the management methods established in the company. Staff turnover can be high in an environment with poor communication and a poorly developed system of incentives and rewards. Employees feel undervalued, ignored, helpless, and insignificant in such an atmosphere. Lack of career and professional development and training also significantly impacts employees’ willingness to quit.
On the one hand, employers appreciate the ambition of employees, but on the other hand, it can be a reason for leaving if employees do not see career opportunities. In addition, dissatisfaction with the profession and the desire to change specialty encourage employees to look for a new application on the side if they do not find it in this company. In addition, the morale of all employees is affected by the dismissal of colleagues. For example, mergers of companies are not without layoffs. After the dismissal of the head of the department after him, all the employees of this department leave the organization. In addition, layoffs that are unfair in terms of personnel reduce the loyalty and motivation of working employees.
People spend a significant part of their lives at work, so it is natural to want to spend this time in comfortable conditions. Cramped, dimly lit rooms, poor climatic conditions, and low-quality equipment or lack thereof are just some examples that cause dissatisfaction with the workspace. In addition, it is difficult to adapt to poor conditions, which causes early dismissal on probation (Idiegbeyan-Ose et al., 2018). Even when new employees stay and work in the company for a long time, their decision to leave can already be made in the first weeks of employment. A good reason for dismissal is the prospect of receiving a higher salary elsewhere. This practice can be observed at all levels of personnel. Salary is not a direct determinant of job satisfaction. Many employees are not satisfied with the psychological climate that has developed at work, they are disloyal and unmotivated, and money, in this case, is a convenient excuse to leave the company.
Vision & Desired Outcome
The strategic vision on the path to changes in employee turnover is to lead the company to a healthy microclimate of internal relations between employees. In addition, organizing the right employee-oriented corporate culture within the company can help achieve the desired results. Such changes should have a positive impact on the desire of employees and their motivation to stay in their place. The desired result in this situation would be a halving of staff turnover. Such a goal is justified by the fact that a certain percentage of this phenomenon is average for any company. Respectively, if the percentage decreases from critical to normal, the result will be satisfactory.
The implementation of this task should be led by company managers who understand its structure and specifics well. These people should know the team they work with and the problems they are concerned about. It does not make sense to invite third-party crisis managers to create corporate ethics since they have not worked in the organization for long enough, and the best way for the team to cope with this is with the help of their leadership (Schaltegger & Burritt, 2018). The process of selecting people to achieve the goal involves relying on statistics and the testimony of employees. Managers who will lead the Change should be long-term in the company and have good relationships with employees. Since they will have to introduce changes directly, it will be more effective if the superiors and subordinates are on good terms. To achieve the vision, steps will be needed to improve the corporate culture and employees’ interpersonal relationships.
The team will develop a strategic vision in such a way as to emphasize the uniqueness of the company and the people who work in it. In addition, the vision includes the creation of comfortable conditions for the staff; accordingly, the creation of a questionnaire for employees will be an essential step. They will have to indicate what shortcomings exist in the current management and for what potential reasons they could quit. The next step in realizing the vision will be to correct the issues identified in the employee survey. For further communication of the vision, the team will use weekly meetings to discuss upcoming changes and review what has been done. According to a study by Ezzani (2019), such meetings are an effective method of reporting and analysis to improve the strategy. Accordingly, this will help management better understand in which direction it is worth moving in the change process.
Barriers to Success
Specific barriers can inevitably arise when making significant changes in the organization of the company’s work. Such barriers can be various factors, such as the habits of the team and the unwillingness to change something, and the uncertainty that innovations will be beneficial. These factors usually arise due to insufficient motivation and negatively affect the course of work. Employees will have to be empowered to remove obstacles in the form of low motivation of the team and unwillingness to change. The team will need resources such as good management, communication, and professionalism to remove these barriers. Barriers will need to be removed by creating and implementing a company vision strategy that the team will develop before taking action. Research by Orji (2019) suggests that the barriers to change in a company are best addressed by creating an updated concept of team organization. This point of view confirms that a strategic vision can effectively deal with obstacles to change.
Recommendations: Short-Term
Short-term indicators of success in making changes play a significant role in the implementation of the entire plan, as they set the direction for further work. The achievement of such indicators will be considered the development of a visual strategy, staff notification about the start of reforms, and positive results at the first meeting. An in-depth team immersion in changing and upgrading their skills may be a recommendation to achieve short-term prospects. Feedback on the success of short-term goals will be provided by each member of the team as well as other employees. Thanks to this, it will be possible to achieve better changes in the future and predict which vector the reforms will follow. The most effective way to implement Change is to use the previously mentioned Kotter’s 8-Step Process for Leading Change. This will allow us to break down the entire process into stages to structure the innovations introduced and improve the ability to analyze them. The data collection methods will be surveys of company employees to identify which changes have been implemented successfully and which are in a stupor. Such surveys will be conducted every week before the meeting. In the future, the obtained data will be used at meetings to analyze the chosen strategy’s effectiveness. Surveys show their effectiveness in many cases when management needs to study the opinion of colleagues and draw up a further action plan for implementing corporate Change (Roh et al., 2019). Thus, the analysis will be simplified and as straightforward as possible to build on the results obtained.
Recommendations: Long-Term & Sustainability
The success of an ethics change initiative and morale uplifting depends on numerous factors, such as adherence to norms and guidelines while executing the strategy. In the long term, success can be maintained by making adjustments and revisions in line with those aspects of the process that need to be improved. The conclusion about this will have to be made by the team responsible for the implementation of the new rules after a meeting with an analysis of the results of achieving short-term goals. Changes should positively impact the company and its productivity, as they are aimed at improving employee morale and increasing their motivation to work in the company. The consequences of achieving such results will be a decrease in staff turnover and, as a result, the normalization of the company’s work. Consolidation and fixation of changes are the final steps to achieve the desired result. Changes will only become part of the corporate culture when they become part of the organization’s core. Therefore, it is vital that innovations are organically included in the current charter and that all employees like them. In this case, the new system can take root, and the staff’s trust will be won. After 2 or 3 years, a tool can be used to compare employee turnover rates before the start of the Change and at the time of the comparison.
By studying examples of solving similar problems in other companies, the experience can be gained, due to which the implementation of new management systems will be more harmonious and straightforward. Considering competitors’ actions, it is also essential to pay attention to the shortcomings and mistakes made in other companies’ planning, implementation, and analysis processes (Lin & Huang, 2020). This will help avoid such oversights when changes are made.
Conclusion
It is worth noting that staff turnover depends on many factors, and with a competent approach to management, they can be avoided, which will allow not resorting to the described process of introducing changes. The process of innovation of the company’s management process should improve employees’ morale in all aspects and create favorable working conditions. The steps to achieve change are essential to be effective because planning and strategizing are vital in preventing managerial errors.
References
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