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Employment Today™


"VALUED EMPLOYEE JUST BAILED? REAL REASON FOR LEAVING REVEALED!"

Dear Kathryn:

Dear Kathryn: With a recent promotion, I inherited a regional branch office that's experienced more turnover in one year than an emergency room has admissions. I could literally build an office park with the nameplates of folks that have left this facility in the last 24 months.

After recovering from the shock of reading the personnel reports, I personally visited with the various department managers, attempting to get a handle as to what's caused dozens of employees to bolt. As many of the managers travel a great deal, they didn't have a lot of insight. The most common story I got explaining the recent departures was that employees got better money elsewhere. The second reason was better duties with more challenges.

I immediately did a salary comparison through local and industry associations and found our pay rate to be on target. As to more opportunity at our competition, that could be true, but doesn't adequately explain the sudden departure of over fifty employees out of one hundred ten! In attempting to get more light on the situation, I contacted recent departing employees. I didn't get any real information from the few return calls I did get other then "management has a lot of problems." No kidding!

I want my corporate headquarters to give me some assistance from their experienced human resource people to help get this place under control. Is this kind of turnover, in light of the moderate job market these last two years, explainable? I've never experienced this and am searching for more answers as to what causes this kind of turnover. What other immediate steps should I be taking?

I'm responsible for making this operation run and not getting much help from the on-site managers. HELP!

ROB T., Middletown, CT

Dear Rob:

While your corporate headquarters may not be as quickly responsive to your initial cry for help, at least they were prescient enough to position you at this branch to recognize and straighten out this major issue. Although the company may not realize how expensive turnover of this nature is, the P&L will soon show the effects of lost efficiency, production, and thus lesser profits soon enough. The additional cost of recruiting, training, down time and lesser productivity will impact the bottom line even more.

The good news is that you're there to wake up corporate and get both local managers and corporate to start listening to former and current employees. Don't be surprised if managers respond with an attitude of indifference, only wanting to protect their place of employment as a good place to work and remain blithely ignorant as to the realities..

The other attitude you may is the view that this is just the "cost of doing business". Turnover of this nature, far outweighs the cost of doing business and you're right, it must stop, soon.

Some facts for you: a recent survey completed by Saratoga Institute showed that 89% of managers believed that employees leave and stay mostly for money, very similar to what your managers think. The second part of the survey however, revealed that 80% of employees leave for reasons related to the job, the manager, the culture or the work environment, not money! The big problem for you is in not knowing what's causing the problem.

Saratoga Institute estimates the average cost of losing an employee to one times annual salary. This means if you lost fifty employees this last year at an average salary of 40k, your company lost $2 million dollars!

Here are some immediate plans you can put into action: 1. Exit interviews and again pursue the core employees that left this last year. Explain you're new, value their insight and will keep it confidential. 2. Ask all employees to complete a questionnaire that targets their job satisfaction/dissatisfaction levels. Ask targeted questions that require the employee to say positives and negatives about the environment, how their performance is critiqued, and communication levels they experience between themselves and their manager and the recognition they get.

By asking employees to participate in this fashion, it shows you want open communication. This spells out that you care about the relationship between them and their boss/employer and your goal is a "partnership", not an adversarial fencing match.

Some additional guidance is available in a new book entitled "The 7 Hidden Reasons Why Employees Leave" by Leigh Branham. You'll get some good details about how to conduct realistic job previews; create realistic job descriptions with expected competencies; make the interview process more then a question and answer session but a preview of coming attractions if they were in the job. Tackling the reasons for the turnover is your first step in preventing more. This will take imm

ediate and dedicated energy in playing detective to find out the reasons behind the exodus and simultaneously, quick work to avoid additional turnover. Not easy, but doable. Good luck.

Dear Kathryn:

I left my employer four months ago, thinking I'd only be on COBRA a few months. Surprisingly, I'm still on COBRA with no job prospects in sight and my ex-employer telling me they're discontinuing any medical coverage. They will be giving "benefit allowances" instead to current employees.

They've notified me I will no longer have COBRA available! Cost of the insurance on my own is exorbitant! Don't they have to continue to offer me COBRA for at least one year?

SUZZANE R., Vernon, CT

Dear Suzzane:

Bad news. Once the medical plan disappears (your former employer no longer will be using this medical plan for any employee), the obligation to provide COBRA disappears.