One of the biggest challenges that we face in business is staff retention. It’s costly, it’s disruptive to our business, and its has a significant impact on our HR departments, who now need to focus on recruitment to address this problem.When we take a FAST approach, which looks to increase our performance in the areas of Focus, Accountability, Simplicity and Transparency, this can have a tremendous impact on our staff.
To increase Accountability we need to be much clearer in our definition of roles and responsibility, we need to communicate our expectation more clearly and look to ensure our teams have the right skills, authority levels and tools to do their job successfully.
When we do this we immediately empower our teams and put them in a position to be successful, which significantly increases their engagement.
When you couple this with a much clearer Focus where everyone has a clear picture of what success looks like, and you have communicated a Simple approach, or at least communicated the approach clearly and simply, then you significantly increase the belief of the team that they can be successful.
With an empowered engaged team that has belief we can achieve anything, and as we start to create a culture based on this we start to meet one of the basic needs of people which is esteem as we give them confidence that they can achieve.
When we do this it can have a significant impact our staff retention, everyone wants to work in a successful environment or play for a successful team. From my experience this has helped keep staff turnover in my teams and departments significantly below that of other areas, usually 50% lower sometimes even higher.
Additionally, I often get approached by people want to come and join the department as they can see that we have created a success culture, one where they have the opportunity to see the fruits of their hard work.
Too often people find themselves working in an environment where their chances of success are hampered, and they become frustrated; a blame culture develops because of a lack of success and it has to be someones fault right and it can’t be the bosses.
In this scenario most people lose their enthusiasm and engagement and begin to look for alternative positions, positions where they could be successful, which not only disrupts your team but also has a cost impact too.
So when you implement a FAST approach you can prevent this staff attrition by having an engaged workforce, which not only has increases retention but also becomes a magnet for talent from other teams and even other companies.
This will then help you avoid the costs of attrition and the consequent recruitment, which can be significant $$$.
If you want to increase staff retention and reduce recruitment costs then implement FAST!
Update: To find out more about FAST sign up for my free introductory webinar that will be held within the next few days.
Gordon Tredgold
