The latest Morning Shift video from Automotive News (an excellent 5-minute review of headlines, even if you’re not in the industry) shares a warning from dealership recruiter Hireology. Its CEO’s prediction on automotive hiring:
You’re going to see the turnover rate go back up. Because if all we’re offering is a lot of money, when that goes away and the job becomes what it’s always been, which is a sales professional, there’s work involved in that, and you’ve got to sell. It’s hard.
Money
“If all we’re offering is money. …” That’s the opportunity.
And it’s a big opportunity. You probably don’t need me to quote how much replacing an employee costs in terms of lost productivity and revenue, wasted manager time, recruitment expenses, onboarding (again), morale, culture, etc.
Perhaps a non-technical employee costs “only” $2,000 to replace. But they take with them the wisdom of knowing how to work with your team’s idiosyncrasies and how to navigate your processes.
It’s hard to put a price on that.
What about an employee with technical expertise? That could be an actual technician of some kind with specific training, or it could be a professional, including in sales. I’ve seen numbers as high as double that employee’s salary. After all, they are the “money pumps,” as one of my clients used to say.
Many of my clients will not wrestle with these costs, however. They offer quite a bit more than money.
But it will be an issue for many businesses. The Big Quit continued in September, with 4.1 million Americans quitting and job openings rising to 10.7 million.
Beyond money
So what else do you offer besides money?
Hip Socket offers an employee performance checklist download to help you think that through. These are items I’ve collected from client success stories, research and best practices.
While the list is geared toward ensuring an employee performs, note that it helps with turnover. After all, turnover is a sign of low employee engagement. Engage the employee, improve both performance and turnover.
The list:
Communicate clearly your expectations. This could be a job description, a process map, a description of what it looks like to live out your organization’s values, etc.
Instead of just telling them what to do, get input from the employee on how they can meet those expectations and why the expectations are important. They have an in-the-trenches view you do not, and their “why” may be different from yours.
Tie your expectations to the overall “why” for the organization.
Train them to meet the expectations. (And broaden when you consider training: product knowledge, people/communication skills, salesmanship, technology usage, etc.)
Give them any and all tools (not just physical!) needed to meet the expectations.
Remove any barriers outside of their control.
Give them feedback, positive and negative, on their performance–including performance with your team’s culture.
Have consequences for meeting and missing expectations. (This, by the way, includes universal consequences so that you don’t lose high performers who see low performers getting away with it.)
Ensure they know you care about them.
Before you execute
Before you go try and execute these items, let me encourage you on two fronts.
First, it really does all boil down to employees knowing that you care. That’s actually the first item on the list.
Second, you can show them you care by having conversations with them about the items on the list and then fulfilling their needs.
If you really care, you’d follow up on their needs.
This is really good news. If you can bring yourself to have a two-way conversation on a regular basis, and then take action on what you learn, it goes a long way toward winning over employees for the long term.
I know a manager who heard in passing that a certain employee loved a certain kind of donut.
Every so often, he brings that employee the donut.
Things get crazy at that workplace. You know who is never going to leave it?