When building and growing an organization, few things are more frustrating or costly than high employee turnover. But with the right approach, you should be able to fight back, improve loyalty, and put your business back on the right path.

Common Causes of High Employee Turnover

Every business is unique, but high employee turnover can almost always be boiled down to a combination of the following factors:

• Overworked. Employees are fine working hard, but there’s a fine line between high expectations and unrealistic expectations. As employees become overworked, they become much more prone to burnout. This creates friction and produces challenges with engaging employees and keeping them on board with the company’s mission and goals.

• Toxic culture. The marks of a toxic culture include hostile interactions, lack of equality (in opportunity and/or pay), high stress levels, poor motivation, and poor morals. As the toxicity increases, so does the turnover rate. 

• Boredom. Employees want to feel energized in their work. Too much boredom can result in disengagement and (eventually) turnover. 

• Lack of opportunity. Employees want to know that they have the opportunity to get promotions and pay raises. If they don’t see other employees moving up the corporate ladder, they’ll become discouraged and look for better opportunities elsewhere. 

• Bad boss. There’s a saying that says, “People don’t leave their jobs, they leave their managers.” If you have a bad boss who is incomptenent, rude, overbearing, or insensitive, it’s going to hurt your cause. Employees might put up with it for a few months, but it’ll eventually push them out.

Strategic Ways to Reduce Turnover

There are plenty of legitimate reasons why employees leave – including a better offer, starting their own business, or pivoting careers. And there really isn’t much you can do about these factors. But then there are controllable elements. You’re in control over the factors above. Now’s the time to strategically change the way you approach your business. Here are some helpful tips:

• Develop a Better Employee Experience

Whether you’ve documented it or not, your company has an employee experience. It’s essentially everything a worker learns, does, feels, or sees at each stage of their employment lifecycle. This includes five key phases: recruitment, onboarding, development, retention, and exit.

If you want to boost retention by reducing turnover, you have to take employee experience seriously. And by focusing on each of the five stages, you’re able to tailor the experience without compromising on the big picture. In other words, you can keep a consistent culture while still providing a unique experience to employees who are just now being onboarded and those who have been on the payroll for years.

• Hire the Right People

You can do yourself a massive favor by hiring people who are a good cultural fit for your organization. (Otherwise you’ll face an uphill battle from the very start.) This is accomplished by clearly defining the role – both to the candidate and to your hiring team – and to implement a detailed due diligence process.

• Terminate Toxic People

Don’t let toxic people stick around. The longer a toxic employee is in your business, the more likely it is that their behavior becomes contagious. Terminate people who don’t fit as quickly as possible. Not only does this eliminate the toxic source, but it also shows your remaining employees that you don’t put up with that kind of behavior. 

• Go Beyond Money

Contrary to popular belief, money is not the best motivator. While a pay raise or bonus can work, its effects are usually short-lived. Within a few weeks or months, the employee will begin looking for the next raise. 

To motivate employees and make them loyal to the organization, you have to go beyond money. Find out what it is your employees really want. Good motivators include status, autonomy, flexibility, and verbal affirmation. 

• Create a Clear Sense of Identity

This tip goes hand in hand with the idea of developing a better employee experience. The goal is to establish a clear company identity so that employees have something tangible to hold onto.

In other words, if asked the question, Why do you like working for our company?, every employee should be able to articulate what it is that keeps them loyal to the business. The exact phraseology might vary, but most of the answers should land near the same target.

Build a Sustainable Business

There’s a lot that goes into building successful and sustainable businesses. But it’s nearly impossible to scale if you don’t have a stable team of people who are committed to your cause. Having said that, now’s the time to reevaluate where you stand and build a business that puts people first. In doing so, you’ll establish the foundational cornerstones needed to grow over the next few years and decades.