A friend of mine (another HR) has been deemed "High Potential" by our company. As a result, he participates in addtional leadership classes with other high performers where they are given special projects and iniatives to research and later present to all the Big Wigs. His current project is about Retention. The project asks him to discuss the financial impact of turnover and then how to improve retention. This IS MY.KIND.OF project. I digress..My friend asked me to review his project and lo and behold, I found that even among most TALENTED group of people, turnover is still widely misunderstood.
Let's start with the basic arithmatic: Turnover = Bad.
For the more advanced student: Turnover + Growth = Counterproductive
Turnover means that WE did something wrong. Turnover means that WE either hired the wrong person to begin with or WE failed in giving that person the training, feedback, mentorship, resources, etc. that they needed to succeed. If the HR team are the guardians of a company's talent, then we MUST not only own turnover, but understand it better than anyone else.
Of course it costs more money to hire a new employee then it does to retain an old one. Of course company's lose millions of dollars constantly rehiring for positions. But if you only think of turnover as some one dimensional static incident that affects the bottom line, you miss the point. Big Time.
A good HR realizes that turnover is a major, fluid character in your Brand Story.
An even better HR realizes that turnover affects the quality of business decisions way before it affects the bottom line (a la 'what came first, the chicken or the egg?').
The best HRs train people on how to make great decisions despite turnover.
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