Employee Turnover
Employee turnover can happen to any business. Even with strong leadership, competitive compensation, and a positive workplace culture, you lose employees from time to time. Some departures are expected. Others happen without warning. Your edge isn’t whether employees leave, but how you respond after someone walks out the door.
The natural reaction is to start looking for a replacement as quickly as possible. But in our more than 30 years of experience as an HR consultant in Texas, that’s not always the first thing a business should do.
Know why the person leaves. Don’t instantly assume that the company did them wrong. People leave jobs for all kinds of reasons. They move. They change careers. They receive a better opportunity. Their personal circumstances change. Sometimes, the employee simply was not the right fit.
But sometimes there’s more to it.
If you don’t take the time to look at what happened, you may end up hiring someone new only to have the same problems again.
Conduct an exit interview when appropriate. Don’t treat that as a formality or a way to convince people to stay. Use it to look for patterns.
You may not agree with everything they tell you. That’s okay.
Consider which positions have the highest turnover, how long employees typically stay, whether separations are concentrated under certain managers, and at which stages of employment they happen. A pattern of employees leaving within their first year, for example, may point to problems with hiring expectations, onboarding, training, or role clarity.
Employees leave for many reasons, and not all of those reasons can or should be controlled by an employer. There’s no need to assume that every departure represents a failure on the company’s part. But you can identify the factors the organization can reasonably address.
What was this employee responsible for? What projects are still open? Are there deadlines coming up? Who was working with this person? Were they responsible for any client relationships? Did they have access to important systems or company information?
We have seen situations where an employee leaves, and the company suddenly realizes that no one else knows how to do half of what that person was handling. Sometimes the job description says one thing, but the employee had gradually taken on several other responsibilities that were never documented. So, replacing the person immediately isn’t always the answer.
You first need to understand the gap they left behind.
If a business immediately distributes that person’s workload among several employees without evaluating capacity, the organization may solve one problem while creating another. A practical transition plan should identify immediate responsibilities and assign temporary ownership. This is only to maintain continuity while the company determines whether it will hire a replacement, restructure the position, automate certain tasks, or eliminate responsibilities that are no longer necessary.
The next step is to ensure the employee’s departure is properly closed out from an administrative and compliance standpoint. Final pay should be paid in accordance with applicable requirements and company policy. Any outstanding reimbursements, commissions, bonuses, or other compensation should be reviewed. Benefits, access to company systems, email accounts, software, buildings, equipment, and company property should also be removed. At the same time, the company should make sure that important business records and files are not lost when an employee’s account is closed.
Communication with the remaining employees is another critical part of handling employee turnover. You don’t need to share private information about why someone left. In fact, you should be careful about discussing confidential personnel matters. But that doesn’t mean you don’t say anything. Silence invites speculation.
Employees should know who is no longer with the organization, who will handle their responsibilities in the interim, and where they should direct questions, reports, or requests.
We also recommend checking in with the remaining employees. Ask how the workload is going. Ask if there are problems with the transition. Find out whether someone is suddenly doing work they were not trained to do. Pay attention to whether the team is becoming overwhelmed. These concerns don’t always come up in formal meetings.
One person leaving may be manageable. But if the employee turnover creates additional stress for everyone else, you could end up with another resignation a few months later. That’s how employee turnover could snowball.
Employee turnover is also a good time to revisit job responsibilities. A position that made sense three years ago may now need a different skill set, technology experience, or level of responsibility.
Recruiting the replacement is only part of the process. The new employee should also be set up for success. If the previous employee left because expectations were unclear, repeating the same onboarding process will likely produce the same problems. The company should use the transition as an opportunity to improve training, documentation, communication, and performance expectations.
For businesses that need assistance finding qualified candidates, an employment agency in Conroe, TX, such as Straight Talk HR Solutions, can also help reduce the pressure placed on internal management during the hiring process. This is alongside providing objective expertise in evaluating reasons for usual separation cases.
Employee turnover can also affect the company’s reputation beyond the immediate workplace. Former employees may share their experiences with prospective employees, customers, or others in the community. While a company can’t control every opinion someone may have after leaving, it can control how professionally it handles the separation.
Respectful communication, consistent policies, timely administrative follow-through, and professional treatment should be standard regardless of how long the employee was with the company or why they left.
Straight Talk HR Solutions, an expert HR consultant in Texas, helps businesses address the people and HR challenges throughout the employee lifecycle, including the difficult period of employee turnover. And it doesn’t stop with filling the empty position. We’ll help you get through the transition.
Our goal is to make sure the next person you hire is not walking into the same problems that caused the last person to leave, but into a workplace where they have a real chance to stay, do their job well, and thrive.
Contact us today to get started.