What is staff turnover costing your organisation?

March 26, 2008 – 7:53 pm

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

The March 2008 Australian Human Resources Institute magazine, HR Monthly, cover story entitled Going concerns: the true cost of staff turnover (membership required to read online text) highlights the increasing cost of staff turnover.  It states that:

...staff turnover in Australia has increased by more than five per cent as the continuing skills shortage and the aging population puts people management practices under pressure.

The cost to Australian organisations of the increased turnover has been estimated at $20 billion.

This figure is based on Australian Bureau of Statistics data. That data puts the average Australian salary at $55,660.80 pa, the workforce of 10.6 million, assumes the cost of replacing an employee is 75 per cent of the role's salary and puts turnover rate at an average of 18.5 per cent across all organisations.

When I read this article I started to think of what might happen in the future... is the skills shortage going to become worse due to the increase in the aging workforce, fewer people coming into the workforce, people currently in the workforce looking for work overseas and of course, developing countries such as China and India draining resources for their own burgeoning workforce needs?

Organisations focus on their employer brand and on attracting people to come and work for them. It is now time to start to look at how to retain people.

But you do not want to retain just anybody.

Organisations need to start to think about what their core business is and what type of person they need to help them deliver their business. What skills, capability and attitude can an organisation not afford to lose?

So here are some questions to get you thinking:

  • Does your organisation monitor how much staff turnover is costing?
  • Does your organisation have the tools to identify employees who have the right skills mix to deliver the business?
  • Would your organisation know what skills will be required in the future and where to find these skills?
  • Does your organisation have retention strategies?
  • Does your organisation conduct exit interviews to gain intelligence of why employees leave?
By Allison Denny-Collins | Posted in Business Realities | Tagged , , , | Comments (2)

Is there really a generation gap?

March 11, 2008 – 8:57 pm

Hello world. It has been a long time since I have written anything; I have been a bit busy with work, study and family. Hopefully I can get into a better habit.

Over the last few weeks I have been reading a book called Retiring the Generation Gap: How Employees Young and Old Can Find Common Solution. Based on research regarding intergenerational conflict, how different generations really are, and what workplaces can do reduce conflicts among people of different generations, it is based on US research conducted over seven years. 

The main point I learnt from this book is that all generations have similar values; they just express them differently. It also highlighted that if you are party to a conflict that appears to be about generation-based values differences it is most likely that the conflict is between individuals and that it has nothing to do with their generation and the conflict is about difference in behaviour rather than about a fundamental values difference.

The research from this book highlighted that top ten values for all generations were:

  • Family (72%)
  • Integrity (65%)
  • Achievement (48%)
  • Love (48%)
  • Competence (47%)
  • Happiness (46%)
  • Self-respect (45%)
  • Wisdom (45%)
  • Balance (39%)
  • Responsibility (38%) [1]

I know that this is US research, but I wonder how different it would be in Australia?

What do you think?

  1. Retiring the Generation Gap: How employees young and old can find common ground, Deal, J., 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Inc., p15
By Allison Denny-Collins | Posted in HR Practices | Tagged | Comments (1)

What ideas do you have?

September 3, 2007 – 2:37 pm

I am currently studying Managing Innovation and Continuous Improvement. When some people think of innovation they think about new technological advances. For organisations to survive in today's fast changing world, innovation should exist at the strategic, tactical and operational levels.

To create a culture of innovation you need to foster an environment where employees are encouraged to explore, to learn, to extend themselves, to fail and to be able to suggest ideas without the fear of being judged. This sounds so simple but in reality it just does not happen!

Think of a time when you have been in a meeting where a suggestion has been made and instead of the group extending on the idea, somebody shoots it down in flames. Or a suggestion is made to management but no feedback is given... it somehow got lost in that management black hole. Depending on how resilient the person is, they may make a few more suggestions, but in the end people eventually stop trying to suggest ideas, become unmotivated and may even start looking for work elsewhere. In the end this is not good for business. Your organisation may even have innovation as one of its values, but if employees are experiencing the things I discussed, then innovation will not grow.

Innovation and Imagination at Work by the Australian Institute of Management states seven barriers to delivering innovation and ten factors for success.

Seven barriers to delivering innovation:

  1. Underestimating what is required
  2. Inadequate formal systems
  3. Inadequate resources for the change process
  4. Insufficient front-line input
  5. Lack of knowledge management
  6. Inadequate governance
  7. Inadequate strategic planning

Ten success factors for building an innovative environment:

  1. Ensuring commitment of the leadership team
  2. Ensuring adequate management capability
  3. Incorporating systematic innovation
  4. Identifying key skills gaps
  5. Using the front-line as a business driver
  6. Building adequate infrastructure
  7. Implementing formal structures and systems
  8. Developing capabilities
  9. Developing accountability
  10. Ensuring organisational continuity

You mission, if you choose to accept it, is to encourage the team you are in to look at the work they do, how it impacts the business and to make suggestions on improvements. Give employees time to research and explore what other organisations are doing. Encourage them to network outside of the team. This could be with other people within the organisation, with clients and with other people outside of the organisation in similar professions. This will help them expand their knowledge and encourage different thinking.

Further reading:

Here is a great presentation from Tara Hunt from Citizen Agency on fostering creative teams.

By Allison Denny-Collins | Posted in Business Realities | Comments (2)

What difference are you making?

August 25, 2007 – 5:35 pm

A few years ago I attended an AHRI conference where I listened to a speaker talk about Australian Social Policy and how there were over 600,000 children in Australia who lived in a household with no employed parent and on welfare. The speaker then went on to speak about the impact of this to the child and the Australian economy. This presentation affected me in a couple of ways.

The first was that I wanted to personally try to make a difference; even if it was a small one, to show a child that life can be better and that they can choose how they can live their life. When I came home from the conference I spoke to my family about what we could do to make a difference in at least one child's life. We set on the path of becoming respite foster carers and for the last two and a half years have cared for two children for three days every month. This for us is very rewarding as we have seen the changes in behaviour and growth of these two children.

The second was a comment from another person in the crowd when we were walking out of the room which was, "What did this have to do with HR?" You may be thinking the same thing. Let me give you my perspective on why this has everything to do with HR and the organisation you are working for.

Research on welfare dependency in families shows there is an increased probability that children from homes receiving welfare will also be dependent on welfare. That means that these children are likely to become unemployed or work in unskilled jobs. These are children that if they had the right type of influences during their schooling years may become one of your prospective employees.

I find that when it comes to recruitment and talking to managers they are focussed on the people they want now and not in the future years. With shortages in the labour market, arising from demographic shifts and from a lack of people with the skills required for available jobs, HR has to start influencing management that they should also be thinking and influencing their prospective employees coming into the Market in the next five to ten years and beyond.

My thought is that organisations should start influencing from the early years of school. This could be achieved by providing a framework for the current employees to volunteer to mentor, tutor, talk to children about the work they do and the choices they made and basically becoming part of the school community. Organisations could provide scholarships for children or they could partner with not-for-profit organisations such as The Beacon Foundation, Barnardos or The Smith Family. There can be positive outcomes for organisations engaging in Corporate Social Responsibility programs particularly in increasing the Employer Brand. There would also be positives for the community and the economy such as having children leave high school with the confidence to make decisions regarding their future; either in further education, training or employment.

If you are interested in further reading on this subject, you might find the following material useful:

By Allison Denny-Collins | Posted in Business Realities | Comments (0)

What is your balance?

August 20, 2007 – 10:22 pm

In an earlier post Murph commented regarding confidence to ask for flexibility of working hours. She has seen too many part timers stall their careers as it is assumed that if you only want to work four days per week, you are not committed to the job.

Work/life balance is becoming increasingly important to employees; their reasons for this are dependent on what is happening in their life. For example, you could have someone who wishes to care for their aging parents, a divorced parent wanting to spend quality time with their children, someone who wants to study or even somebody who loves to go surfing when the surf is good. Each particular example would require a different flexible working approach.

With a growing skills shortage and the aging workforce, organisations are starting to see flexible working practices as a way to attract and retain their employees. Organisations are finding that introducing flexible working options provide the following advantages:

  • Becoming an employer of choice and realising the employee value proposition
  • Reduced absenteeism
  • Reduced attrition
  • Improved productivity
  • Reduced stress levels and improved morale and commitment
  • Potential for improved occupational health and safety records

These days flexible working practices are not only about part-time work. Organisations are offering various flexible working practices such as:

  • Compressed working week
  • Flexitime
  • Job sharing
  • Telework or home based work
  • Rostered days off
  • Shorter work days
  • Phased retirement
  • Paid maternity, paternity, grandparents, carers, volunteering, cultural, study and bereavement leave
  • On site or near site childcare (I have been lucky to experience this and I visited my daughter during breaks)
  • Sabbaticals

However, I have found that creating policies on flexible working practices is not enough. You need to also have a culture and systems which support flexible working practices. For example, there is no use having a home telecommuting policy if your IT systems do not support it.

Another issue is the unwritten ground rules, i.e. even though there is a policy on flexible working practices there is the culture of "that is not how things are done around here". I call this unwritten rule the 'presenteeism culture', i.e. managers and colleagues who believe they need to see you to believe you are working. For me this also highlights that there is very little trust within a team. Managers and colleagues should be focusing on performance and actually empowering their staff, not focusing on attendance and supervision.

Some sites you may find useful are:

By Allison Denny-Collins | Posted in Business Realities | Comments (3)