When a business cultivates a working environment that is inherently negative, it leads to the staff who work there not enjoying their jobs on the whole, likely leading them to regularly look for work elsewhere. Not a problem for the business, though, right? They can just keep hiring new people to replace them. Well, not only is that more work than is necessary, but there might be far more in the way of consequences to a high staff turnover than simply that – and it might be in your best interest, if you’re behind a business, to keep turnover as low as possible.
Future Employees
The people you’re trying to hire to replace those who leave won’t just slot in that position automatically. Of course, you go through the work to ensure they’re suitable for the role you’re offering, but they’ll be sizing your company up in much the same way.
A high staff turnover tells them that this is a place where people don’t like to work, and they’ll want to know why. It could be that the atmosphere is negative, meaning that even factors such as the salary don’t make it worth it. However, it could also be that there is simply no future in the jobs being filled, which is where employee training would be appreciated.
So, you can start to think about what you’ll change here. You want to cultivate a positive environment, but more directly, you could think about company benefits and training opportunities that might immediately pique someone’s interest in working with you.
Your Online Reputation
It’s also important to consider where this talk of your staff turnover gets discussed in the first place – online. Your reputation in the digital space is something that you don’t have complete control over, and while how you act as a company is going to affect how people perceive you, negative qualities such as high staff turnover and poor workplace culture are going to be discussed.
Unfortunately, your online reputation is something that you might find difficult to change; it’s just important to remember that even if you do improve conditions, it’s going to take a bit of work for those changes to counteract the negative that’s already been spread about your business – difficult, but not impossible.
Decreased Productivity
Additionally, thanks to the time you’ve lost on more skilled employees leaving and the ones left needing to train up new and unfamiliar staff members, your productivity will inevitably take a hit. In the short term, this might not represent a huge issue, and it will happen from time to time regardless of your turnover. However, when that turnover is high, this happens more frequently, exacerbating the problem significantly.
Furthermore, suppose you’re finding that staff is leaving and people aren’t immediately filling those positions. In that case, this problem becomes even worse, and you might not even have enough employees on-hand to operate your business correctly – resulting in an enormously negative impact on your output, which is obviously something you’d like to avoid.
