We are a growing business and staff numbers have increased from 66 to 113 in the last 2 years thanks to winning a major 5 year contract. We are hoping to grow even more as this current project positions the company well to tender for other significant projects. Our problem is whilst we have been busy recruiting it has become more common for the pre-existing staff to leave including 5 staff we took on during the last 2 years. This is a new experience for us. What can we do?
Your question actually raises two fundamental questions.
It is important to know the answer to both of these questions. These are fundamental questions for all organisations. In your organisation's case, the answers to these questions are more compelling given the businesses growth phase and the relatively small labour pool you are accessing to recruit staff.
To answer the questions you need data – qualitative and quantitative and essentially the best source of this is to ask your employees. The two ways you may wish to collect this data given your size and circumstances is to conduct focus groups with your existing staff and to start doing exit interviews.
In your company's circumstances the quickest and most proactive way to gain insight is to conduct focus groups. A focus group is a small group of people brought together to discuss a few key questions. In your business’ case, you could run a number of sessions with small groups of no greater than 10 asking key questions like:
Asking open questions of a few groups made up of a representative cross section of staff can obtain very valuable information and key insights. It could turn up issues like the need for flexibility, new remuneration practices such as performance or retention bonus’s, fine tuning of the culture which is changing due to the influx of new staff swamping the existing staff and/or changing the ratios of Gen Y to Gen X to Baby Boomers.
Maybe growth and new project focused staff has meant a change to a more ‘just do it’ culture to the detriment of the previous consultative culture and family atmosphere. It might become apparent that with the growing complexity of the business, managers need training around project and/or people management and human resource management practices and policies need to be developed in line with the evolution of the business.
Asking colleagues why they think recently engaged staff left might reveal that informal induction and training practices that worked when the business was smaller are no longer suitable and this needs to be formalised and documented.
It could be that the business is on top of most things and it’s a great place to work but that the staff are predominantly baby boomers and are commencing to retire at a rate that could accelerate – possibly to an exponential rate by the end of five years if nothing to stem this is done now.
Successful focus groups require some planning and questioning techniques however all businesses following some simple guidelines can run them.
The business has also evolved to the stage where it should start conducting formal confidential exit interviews with departing staff. Well conducted and standardised exit interviews gather both qualitative and quantitative data about what people appreciated about working there, what could be improved and ultimately, why they have chosen to leave at this point of time.
Overtime, exit interviews can be a great source of information and enable you to track trends, take action and then measure the results. The only downside is that at the point you are conducting an exit interview, the horse has bolted so that is why in your businesses circumstances, you start with focus groups as a priority and then commence exit interviews.
You also need to decide how to analyse and report on the data in a way that provides insight for the business but assures the desired confidentiality of the participants. The company may also wish to track and measure turnover against itself (is it steady, declining or improving?) and against the industry sector.
