Becoming the ‘Workplace of Choice” for the people who already work for you is another challenge. For some employees, the company they now work for is the only company they ever want to work for. For others, the grass looks much greener elsewhere and they are simply putting in time until the opportunity arises to move on.
Indicators that you may be having problems getting people to stay ...
How do you know you are having trouble getting people to stay in your company? The most common quantitative measure is called “employee turnover”. There are several ways to calculate turnover but we should adopt one measure in this program so that companies can compare themselves one to another.
THE COMMON METHOD: The most common method of calculating turnover is to take a count of the number of employees as of a given date, usually year-end and then to count the number of those employees who were there one year ago. The difference between those numbers taken as a percentage of the end of year headcount gives you a turnover rate. To illustrate, let’s say there were 100 employees at the beginning of the year, and 100 employees at the end of the year, and at the end of the year, 84 of those employees were the same ones as were there the previous year. You would say that the turnover rate was 16%.
SOME COMPLICATIONS: The common method will work for most situations. Sometimes we want to dig deeper because certain jobs are causing the numbers to be high. In the illustration above, suppose one of the 16 who left was actually replaced three times. The employee quit in January, the replacement quit in April, and another person was hired who lasted only until November. You may want to investigate that particular job. You might also want to count every time an employee left the company and another one was hired - in this case you’d get an 18% turnover rate.
Another complication that can make the numbers difficult to compare across companies or time is fluctuations in the size of the workforce. Suppose the work force is 100 at the beginning and 90 at the end of the year. Perhaps 16 people have left, but only 6 have been hired during the year, while 2 more were hired and retired within the same year. You might define turnover as 18/100 or as 18/90, or as 18/95, since 95 is the average of 90 and 100. Instead of 95, you might want to do a fancier average, where you actually add up the number of employees on each day of the year, and divide the total by 365.
In addition to looking at overall rates, you might also consider what jobs are giving you trouble. If a key job requiring special, difficult-to-find skills is a victim of frequent turnover it might be much more of a problem that frequent turnover in a job that is easily filled.
ASSESSMENT TOOLS
‘Give us your feedback’: a questionnaire for current staff about their satisfaction with your workplace
This questionnaire is designed to collect general information from your workforce on how satisfied they are with your company as a place to work. It covers a broad range of topics that can help you pinpoint the areas that could lead to turnover amongst current staff if unattended. It can also pinpoint what employees like about your workplace so you don’t mess with things that are working. It can be given to all employees to complete as a paper and pencil survey. It can also be used as an interview guide. To take a look at a version of this questionnaire in Adobe click here. A recent article in the Globe and Mail provides some interesting comparisons of job satisfaction between Canadian, American and british employees. It also provides some baseline against which you can compare your survey results. Click here to see the article.
ON-LINE VERSION You can also have your employees complete this questionnaire on-line. To see what the on-line questionnaire looks like, click on this link. To make arrangements to use the on-line version, e-mail Al Holmes at Sequus.
‘Exit Survey’: a questionnaire for leaving employees
The best source of information on the causes of employee turnover is the employee who is about to leave your company. This questionnaire asks questions about the reasons for leaving. It can be given to all employees who are leaving to complete as a paper and pencil survey. It can also be used as an interview guide. To take a look at a version of this questionnaire in Adobe click here.
ON-LINE VERSION You can also have your departing employees complete this questionnaire on-line. To see what the on-line questionnaire looks like, click on this link. To make arrangements to use the on-line version, e-mail Al Holmes at Sequus.
‘Post Exit Survey or Interview Guide’: a questionnaire for former employees
This questionnaire is designed to collect information from former employees. It will help you collect information on why people have left your company and how they feel about their new employer in comparison to your company. If you have lost several persons over the past year and they all tell the same story, then it may be time to fix the problem. A variation of this questionnaire could be used to collect information from current employees on those who have left.
It can be given to former employees as a mailout to complete as a paper and pencil survey. It can also be used as an interview guide for someone to call former employees. To take a look at a version of this questionnaire in Adobe click here.
ON-LINE VERSION You can also have your former employees complete this questionnaire on-line. To see what the on-line questionnaire looks like, click on this link. To make arrangements to use the on-line version, e-mail Al Holmes at Sequus..
‘Organizational Culture Diagnostic Survey’: a questionnaire to measure workplace culture
This questionnaire is designed to collect information from current employees about how supportive the current culture is. It will help you collect information on employee understanding of the company mission, on employee understanding of their goals, how supportive the work environment is, the reward system, performance feedback, client focus and job satisfaction.
The questionnaire can be used as a mail out to employees or as an interview guide for someone to call employees.To take a look at a version of this questionnaire in Adobe click here.
ON-LINE VERSION It is also available as an on-line tool that can be e-mailed to employees and processed by a third party. To see what the on-line questionnaire looks like, click on this link. To make arrangements to use the on-line version, e-mail Al Holmes at Sequus..
Additional tools for assessing specific issues…
1. STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP
Sometimes a company has such a compelling and inspiring vision that people want to stick around to see it fulfilled and make a contribution to it. Again, you can ask current staff what they think the company mission, vision, core values, strategic priorities are. If they don’t know, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. They may just be out of the communications loop or it may not been seen as important enough to remember.
In the “Workplace of Choice” league, middle management and frontline staff are involved in strategic planning directly or through representatives. For a worksheet that will help you to develop a strategic plan for your company click here.
A tool that allows you to diagnose your entire organization can be found by following this link.
2. FRONTLINE MANAGEMENT
The single most important determinant of staff satisfaction with their workplace according to recent research on work-life balance is the behaviour and attitudes of the person to whom they report. It appears that otherwise outstanding workplaces can be considered negative by the persons whose immediate supervisor is seen as unsatisfactory. Also, outstanding supervisors can make an otherwise unattractive employer appear positive.
3. WORKPLACE CULTURE
Workplace culture is a vague concept which can be made much more concrete and measurable with the help of diagnostic tools. Our favourite culture diagnosis tool is the Organization Culture Diagnostic survey referred to above.
4. WORK-LIFE BALANCE
People leave organizations for many reasons. One that is becoming more noticeable is the failure to balance work with the rest of one’s life. The average number of hours devoted to work has been growing rather than diminishing. Stress levels are rising. Among the tools available to measure work-life balance is The Canadian Healthy Workplace Criteria from the National Quality Institute.
5. COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS
What is the level of pay in the company? Is it below, equal to or above that of competitors? All other things being equal, people will leave for more money.
What about benefits? How do they stack up? Wage, Salary and Benefits Surveys are available from a variety of sources or do your own. To check satisfaction with your company's pay and benefits, try using this instrument.
6. JOB/WORK DESIGN & STRUCTURE
Job structure influences job satisfaction. The more that a job offers the following characteristics, the more motivating it is
- SKILL VARIETY: Jobs that demand many skills are more interesting than those than demand few
- TASK SIGNIFICANCE: People seek meaning in their lives and their work. We want to know ‘why’ we do what we do and we want the answer to be meaningful.
- WHOLE JOB: People want to do the full cycle from beginning to end. Jobs that are broken up into mini-tasks each assigned to a different person may be easier to control but they are boring.
- EMPOWERMENT: The more people get to decide how they do their work the more empowered they feel. If they have to run to a supervisor to get help with every situation that doesn’t fit the norm, they will feel less empowered.
- DIRECT FEEDBACK FROM THE WORK ITSELF: People need to know how they are doing relative to expectations, standards, goals, averages, or other measures and they need to know that from doing the work rather than hearing it from a boss. Imagine how exciting bowling would be if you couldn’t see the pins drop or worse yet, wait to hear from a supervisor that you “…missed three”.
Click here for a tool to help you look more closely at job design.
One of the reasons that teams have become such an important work design tool is because they allow opportunities to build in all of the above factors in otherwise dissatisfying workplaces. Consider the difference between linear auto assembly lines where a person gets to put on hubcaps all day versus team-based structures where a group assembles an automobile from the chassis up. To learn more about team structures and determine if they apply to you click here.
7. LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT
The opportunity to learn, grow and develop on the job and throughout a career is important to many employees. To assess this, examine how long it takes for an employee to learn how to perform the work at an acceptable level. If that time is measured in days or weeks, what do they do for the rest of their life? If it is measured in years, then there is evidence of continuous learning. If it takes a lifetime to master a job or series of jobs then you can have lifelong learning.
Learning can begin on day one through the way employers introduce new employees to the workplace. Some employers neglect this opportunity to get started on the right foot with new employees, others do an outstanding job. Check out your New Employee Orientation Process by getting staff to complete the New Employee Orientation survey. Click here to look at the Adobe version or click here to try the online version.
ON-LINE VERSION You can also complete both of the above questionnaires on-line. To see what the on-line questionnaires look like, click the links below. To make arrangements to use the on-line version, e-mail Al Holmes at Sequus.
8. WORKPLACE DIVERSITY
Look at the diversity in your community. Check out the diversity in your workforce. Your company's workforce should begin to reflect the community in which it's located. Click here to find the relevant stats on Winnipeg and Manitoba and a work sheet in which you can make a company comparison and develop a workplan to close any gaps that might exist.
