5 High Turnover Rate Causes & Solutions
HRDQ StaffAre you frustrated with your business feeling like a revolving door where employees come and go faster than you can onboard new hires? High turnover can be costly, disruptive, and damaging to team morale – but understanding the root causes is the first step toward creating a more stable and engaged workforce. Maybe you're unsure why employees are leaving in the first place, or perhaps you’ve tried different strategies with little success.
We’ll discuss the most common reasons behind high turnover rates, from workplace culture and management styles to compensation and career growth opportunities. More importantly, we’ll provide actionable solutions you can implement today to improve retention, boost employee satisfaction, and build a stronger, more committed team.
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Table of Contents
High Turnover Rate Causes
Below are the five most common causes of a high turnover rate.
Limited Opportunity for Career Growth
There's nothing more discouraging to an employee than knowing there is little to no opportunity for career growth within the company. Career development encompasses a variety of facets, including structured career paths, opportunities to learn new skills, and increased responsibilities. When none of these are offered, employees become unmotivated to do their jobs and look to other companies to help them grow in their careers.
Set a plan in place for your employees' career journey: Ongoing Performance Development
Solution: Offer Employee Development Training
If your company lacks career growth opportunities, it's time to create opportunities. The easiest way to do this is by offering employee development training. Invest in cultivating the skills they need to complete their jobs and continue developing new training programs as industry needs change. Also, be sure to reward top employees with new responsibilities for them to tackle. Overall, showing that you care about your team's success is key to reducing your turnover rate.
Poor Management
Poor management also contributes significantly to high turnover rates. Your managerial team may be underperforming in several ways, including possessing poor communication skills, being disorganized, not giving praise, and overworking employees. A supervisor who doesn't listen to the needs of their team will cause distrust and general dislike, which can inspire employees to seek out new opportunities with better management.
Solution: Develop Your Managers
Training is crucial for both providing career growth and developing your underperforming managers. Create a training program focusing on key supervisory skills, including coaching, conflict management, emotional intelligence, decision-making, and more. Each of your superiors should take the course and be expected to maintain a high level of excellence. Have weekly check-ins with your managers to ensure they're on course. If you don't see improvement, additional training will be necessary.
A helpful tool to sharpen your supervisory skills: Supervisory Skills Questionnaire
Incorrect Fit
Employees will quickly grow tired of a job that they don't like. When they're placed in a role that's not the right fit for them regarding their strengths, weaknesses, and interests, they'll begin to look for roles that are a better match.
Solution: Assess Your Employees & Applicants
Before placing your employees in a new role, provide them with a soft skills assessment to ensure their strengths and weaknesses align with the job requirements. Providing a quick assessment is all it takes to prevent employees from landing in unfit positions that cause unhappiness.
Negative Workplace Culture
Don't underestimate the power of a negative work environment. Having poor or no workplace culture often leads to hostility, lack of teamwork, unorganized processes, lack of accountability, and a generally toxic atmosphere. Nobody wants to work in an organization without strong core values and a mission that's not upheld.
Solution: Develop a Strong Workplace Culture
Do you believe your company culture is lacking? Then, it's time to reevaluate your core values and mission and ensure they are upheld throughout daily work life. Luckily, if you're already taking steps to improve career growth opportunities, develop your managerial team, and ensure employees land the right job, you're already taking steps in the right direction. You should also define values you'd like your employees to uphold and reward them when they do so.
View our blog post, "What is Workplace Culture & How Can You Improve It?" for more tips and recommendations.
Insufficient Pay & Benefits
Pay and benefits affect your employees' livelihoods. If they feel they aren't being taken care of by their company, on top of experiencing any of the above problems, they will be more inclined to look for a job that accommodates them correctly for the type and amount of work they're doing.
Solution: Invest Upfront
According to the Center for American Progress, the typical cost of turnover is 21% of an employee's annual salary. That's some serious money!
It's more beneficial to pay your employees better outright than to lowball them, knowing they'll eventually be replaced. Slightly increasing pay/benefits or simply ensuring they match industry standards will actually provide your business with serious savings.
The same goes for training programs, as well. It's better to invest in the long-term success of your employees than to spend revenue training new hires over and over again.
Decrease Your Turnover Rate with HRDQ
We hope these high turnover rate causes and solutions help you identify problem areas and begin creating a plan to resolve them. If you’re ready to invest in decreasing your turnover rate, get started with HRDQ today. Our Reproducible Training Library can help you provide career growth for your employees, improve your managers, better match workers to the right jobs, and develop your company culture. If you’re ready to experience the power of engaged employees, check out our collection of courses!
