The average cost of
recruiting an employee in the UK is around £5,300, but this figure in itself is
not particularly helpful. The actual cost can be as low as £1,500, but for a
middle, or senior manager, it can easily cost well in excess of £8,000.
High rates of labour
turnover are clearly expensive in terms of the actual costs of recruitment, but
there are other – very significant - issues that need to be considered:
·
Lost production,
·
Increased production costs, for example the use of overtime to
cover staff shortages
·
Increased costs of training replacement employees,
·
Loss of know-how and customer goodwill,
·
Potential loss of sales (e.g. if there is high turnover amongst
the sales force), and;
·
Damage that may be done to morale and productivity, which is an
intangible but potentially significant cost.
Combined with the costs
of recruitment, all of these can have a major impact on the ability of your
organisation to succeed in a highly competitive market.
One of the key areas of
labour turnover can often be poor morale and low levels of motivation within
your workforce. Unhappy employees often leads to conflict situations within
your organisation and this can also be a very expensive issue to resolve.
The labour turnover
cycle can often go round and round in a vicious circle of conflict situations,
poor morale levels and ultimately increased turnover of staff and huge costs of
replacing your team member.
There are a couple of
simple remedies we suggest to avoid this scenario and help break the cycle of
labour turnover:
Mediation
A great solution to
workplace conflict - mediation is an informal dispute resolution process,
facilitated by a third party trained mediator, aimed at bringing two or more
parties together to clear up a misunderstanding, explore concerns, and help
reach an amicable resolution. Many employees can be unhappy about jealousy over
a promotion, have incompatible working styles or personalities or even opposing
targets. Mediation can be a cost effective solution to resolving an employee’s
issues, and potentially losing them.
Coaching
Coaching is a targeted,
individual-focused solution which helps with organisational performance or
development as well help towards personal objectives and can help with issues
from leadership team development, performance, interpersonal skills and much
more. Coaching can really help enhance working relationships and tackle
behavioural and performance issues. It also optimises costs, due to the
one-to-one arrangement and personalised format.
Training
If you
need any help or advice on learning how to resolve your labour turnover issues,
speak to us about our range of courses that are aimed at really nipping
conflict in the bud and ultimately retaining your team. All our training is
action-oriented and tailored to the organisation - by creating relevant case
studies and activities, the delegates are better able to absorb and retain the learning
material in the longer term. We can also provide pre and post course options to
inform the training design and support delegates in translating the newly
learned material back into their daily working lives.