Latest news with #employeeTurnover
Fast Company
03-07-2025
- Business
- Fast Company
The reason why most employees quit (and what leaders can do about it)
In 2022, the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic gave rise the Great Resignation. This trend saw employees around the world leaving their places of work in droves. As a result, employee turnover surged to unprecedented levels. While resignation rates have gradually decreased from their 2022 peak over the past few years, turnover continues to be a major challenge for businesses. Recent research from PwC revealed that a fifth (20%) of employees had considered leaving their role in the past year, rising to a quarter (25%) of employees aged 18–24. Retention is no longer about salary alone. It's about purpose, progression, and organizations seeing them as more than just a job title. Employees want to be at workplaces that offer growth and feedback, and a culture that reflects their values. The good news is that acting now can turn this challenge into a competitive advantage. Here are three actions that leaders can take to improve their retention, building workplaces that people do not want to leave, but rather stay at, grow, and thrive. Listen to your team (and do so more often) To understand and address the cultural challenges that might be causing team members to leave, start by gathering insights through surveys at key moments. That means onboarding, ongoing performance conversations, and exit interviews. These touchpoints offer a window into your employees' experiences. It also reveals their joys and struggles throughout their journey. Leaders need to prioritize consistent, open feedback to show their teams that they value their evolving needs. Annual surveys alone are potentially missing key growth opportunities. Instead, embrace frequent 'pulse' surveys and platforms for ongoing dialogue, creating a space where employees can feel truly heard. Perhaps most importantly, there's no quicker way to find out how team members are really feeling. They need to know that the company hears and accepts them for who they are Additionally, consider moving away from anonymous feedback. While anonymity may feel protective, it can suggest a lack of trust or safety. Building a culture of psychological safety, where team members feel secure sharing openly fosters trust and strengthens bonds. By nurturing this environment, leaders empower honest, heartfelt conversations that uplift their teams and open up the space to heal any existing rifts. Redefine success with people-centric KPIs Performance and adherence to a company's wider purpose matter—but not at the cost of people. To create healthy, thriving workplace cultures, organizations need to strike a fine balance between People, Purpose, and Performance. Organizations that achieve this foster a powerful state where productivity, team efficiency, and incredible engagement come together to create teams that produce and support one another as never before. When KPIs focus exclusively on delivery and deadlines, pressured managers may fall into the trap of neglecting employee well-being and development. Therefore, by prioritizing KPIs that serve the people, rather than solely focusing on the system, leaders demonstrate a commitment to their team's well-being and growth. Smart leaders shift the balance by daring to care for their people and introducing people-first KPIs alongside traditional business metrics. For example, what percentage of employees are in roles that align with their strengths and aspirations? How frequently are managers recognizing and rewarding their team's contributions? Even a simple 'good job' from a manager, delivered with sincerity, goes a long way. Are managers actively developing high-potential individuals so that they're ready for leadership roles? How often are you opening team meetings by checking in with team members and reminding them of why they matter to the project and wider organization? Even simple acts, like regular, sincere recognition, drive engagement. By embedding these behaviors into people-led leadership KPIs, organizations reinforce that organizations don't see people as a cost to manage, but as an asset they need to cultivate. By emphasizing people-centered KPIs, leaders ultimately contribute to the success and performance of the organization, while also creating a shared sense of purpose that inspires team members at all levels, ensuring that everybody wins. What the head office can learn from the shop floor I truly believe that leaders everywhere can learn a lot about people management from taking a step away from the traditional corporate environment and spending more time with their 'on the ground' teams. The best leadership insights often come not from the boardroom but the shop floor. In customer-facing roles—like retail or hospitality—the true health of your culture becomes clear. These environments offer an unfiltered view of how companies really treat, support, and motivate employees. My turning point in this regard came in my years in retail management, when I realized that I needed to break the circle of performance above all else in favor of cultures that allow team members to bring their full selves to work. Leaders who step into these spaces gain firsthand insight into what really drives their people: psychological safety, empathy, development opportunities, and being heard. The fundamentals don't change between corporate and customer-facing roles, but they're often far more visible at the coalface. Spending time with frontline teams also exposes leaders to a more diverse cross-section of their workforce, building empathy and understanding that can shape smarter, more inclusive strategies. People leave cultures rather than companies While some employee attrition is inevitable in business, the truth is that much of it is preventable. When people walk away, it's often from a lack of growth, recognition, or leadership that genuinely cares. Leaders who act with intention have a tremendous opportunity to build powerful, purpose-led workplaces that attract and retain top talent for the long haul.
Forbes
30-06-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Turnover Contagion: Why One Exit Becomes A Stampede
A campaigner from the Stop Trump Coalition, wearing a Mark Zuckerberg mask poses during a creative ... More action to demand higher taxation of Big Tech companies, including Meta, X and Amazon, outside Meta Offices in London, Tuesday, May 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth) In a recent podcast, Sam Altman noted that despite Meta offering 100 million dollar signing bonuses to poach OpenAI's top talent, so far none of their best employees had left the organization. However, in the last two weeks, eight expert researchers have been recruited to Mark Zuckerberg's superintelligence unit at Meta. The poaching of talent not only risks the obvious brain drain associated with the loss of resources, it also risks signalling social cues and triggering biases that shape human behaviour. As perceptions become influenced by the salience of turnover, suddenly one new hire becomes three, and then three becomes FOMO on fire. What's unfolding isn't just about the broader employee headcount. Like the four-minute mile, when events disrupt the status quo, observers get an opportunity to replace what they are comfortable with what could be possible. This phenomenon stretches beyond the workplace and into our most intimate lives. Research shows that when one employee leaves a company, the people around them are significantly more likely to follow. But the same is true when one friend gets divorced. In both cases, we see the same underlying phenomenon: social contagion. Whether it's leaving a job or a marriage, quitting is rarely just about you. The Hidden Science Behind Turnover Contagion According to March and Simon's theory from Organizations, a book considered one of the most seminal publications in business and management and voted the seventh most influential management book of the 20th century, there are two factors that predict turnover: 1) how desirable it would be to leave the organization, which includes how satisfied they are with their job, and how committed they are to the firm; and 2) how difficult it would be to leave, or in practical terms, what the availability and quality of alternative employment looks like. Because humans are social animals, we look to others to make sense of our experience and in short, this means that turnover is contagious. Decades of organizational psychology research support the notion that employee turnover has a spillover effect such that turnover begets turnover. An HR Analytics firm recently found that when a team member voluntarily quits, studies show the remaining employees are 7% to 14% more likely to leave themselves. In smaller, tighter teams, the risk can double, particularly if the person who leaves is a high performer or a respected peer. In an article published in the Academy of Management, researchers collected data from 45 branches of a regional bank and 1,038 departments of a national hospitality firm to find that job embeddedness and job search behaviours of coworkers can influence 'voluntary turnover' over and above that explained by other individual and group-level factors. Furthermore, meta-analytic evidence suggests that when top performers leave, due to their influence on norms and expectations, their departure has a greater impact on turnover risk than low performers. Psychologists call this tendency to use social cues to guide our decisions 'social proof.' We tend to look to others when making uncertain choices. If someone we respect walks away from their job—and seems happier, richer, or more fulfilled on the other side—it doesn't just open a door, it changes the wallpaper in the room we're standing in because employee exits can also alter the emotional ecosystem. They redistribute workloads, shift social alliances, and often trigger introspection: 'Am I next?' or 'Am I happy here?'. McKinsey found that employees often leave in clusters where they will 'pull' 1 or 2 of their close coworkers with them within 6 months to a year. In a 2012 meta-analysis of over 300 studies on turnover published in the Journal of Management, the authors wrote: "Voluntary turnover spreads in an organization like a social virus. Coworkers' decisions to leave are consistently among the strongest predictors of one's own decision to quit - often stronger than job satisfaction or pay alone'. Divorce, By Association This same logic applies to romance. In 2013, researchers drew on a longitudinal data set from the long-running Framingham Heart Study to show that that divorce can spread between friends and that they extend to two degrees of separation in a network (i.e., your cousin's divorce and your cousin's friend's divorce can influence you). They found that your odds of getting divorced increase by 75% if a close friend gets divorced. Even a friend of a friend divorcing increases your risk by 33%. When someone in our circle decides to break the mold, it creates a psychological permission slip to challenge the status quo, which, based on the notion that 70% of change attempts fail, most people have an affinity for their comfort zone. Yet, when change is modelled by someone we know and love, it feels more possible—and less terrifying. Why This Matters More Than Ever In a post-pandemic world still reorganizing itself, in a race for technological power with AI re-inventing how we work, and in an increasingly precarious geopolitical context, being intentional about social influence and change matters. Social media and hybrid workplaces have made our environments even more porous such that contagion spreads faster—emotionally and professionally. The task for managers and employees alike is to think more carefully about what behaviour may need to be muted or amplified in order to send the optimal social cues out to the organization. On the receiving end, with all the noise around us, it's handy to have a conscious filter ready that helps discern what social signals you will permit to influence you choices. How to Separate The Wolf from The Pack If you're observing others around you change, professionally or personally, it's natural to feel curious. But not every signal needs to be followed. Here's how to stay intentional: Final Word A large body of evidence suggests we don't make big decisions in a vacuum. Whether it's a workplace resignation or a personal unraveling, our networks act like psychological mirrors. When one person finds the courage to change, the rest of us feel the edge of that mirror—and sometimes, we step through. When Zuckerberg picks off OpenAI's best and brightest, he's not just buying intelligence. He's catalyzing exodus by reshaping what it means to stay loyal, what opportunities feel out of reach, and who gets to reinvent themselves. Zuckerberg's poaching spree is just the high-stakes version of a much older human truth: transformation is easier to imagine when someone close has already blazed the trail. Before you run with the herd, take time to reacquaint yourself with your own self-determined will so that you can live and work with more authentic alignment.
Finextra
03-06-2025
- Business
- Finextra
How Artificial Intelligence is Empowering SMEs to Prevent Employee Turnover: By Dmytro Spilka
Employee turnover can be a highly costly burden on small to medium-sized enterprises, but could emerging technologies like artificial intelligence prompt improvements in retention rates? With the average employee costing an estimated £12,000 to replace for SMEs, instances of high turnover can be severely damaging to operational efficiency. With around 70% of employee turnover coming as a voluntary decision, it's a significant challenge for enterprises to manage engagement and satisfaction rates in a way that prevents the rigmarole of continuous job listings and onboarding strategies. For HR professionals, countering turnover is a frustration that can threaten the long-term growth of businesses. However, there are many measures that can be taken to limit the negative impact of turnover. Calculating Turnover Calculating your staff turnover can be a useful way to monitor for emerging trends within your SME while helping to report on current rates. To do this, find the average number of employees for the period you're observing while excluding temporary or seasonal staff members for the sake of accuracy. By adding the number of employees at the start of the observation period to those at the end, and then dividing them by two, you can calculate the average number of employees within your business. Now, to work out the turnover rate, you'll need to divide the number of employees who left the company by the average number of employees. Finally, multiply the result by 100 to calculate staff turnover as a percentage. With CIPD suggesting that the average staff turnover rate in the UK is 34%, any figure higher than this should be a suitable cause for revising your employee retention strategy. The emergence of artificial intelligence has also paved the way for unprecedented control in improving the engagement of enterprise staff, helping to improve the long-term satisfaction of employees. The AI boom carries some significant implications for employee turnover, and there are many ways in which the technology is already helping to prevent staff from looking elsewhere for work. With this in mind, let's explore some of the growing use cases of artificial intelligence in action: Predictive Analytics Artificial intelligence is capable of performing predictive analytics to forecast potential staff turnover by identifying trends and patterns at a rate that human HR professionals can't replicate. For instance, AI could find a correlation between the different management approaches of team leaders and employee disengagement. This can help to refine your SME's management styles to improve satisfaction levels and offer proactive training or support to your management team. With 92% of employees recognising the importance of working for an enterprise that values their emotional and physiological well-being, AI tools can also use predictive analytics to monitor work patterns and identify early signs of dissatisfaction before adapting the workloads of affected workers. These predictive insights can help stamp out instances of burnout, boost engagement, and lead to higher productivity among the workforce. Appraisal Accuracy Crucially, 69% of employees claim that receiving regular recognition from their employers would motivate them to work harder and stay longer in their respective roles. This means that optimising your appraisal system should be a priority if your turnover rates are too high. Artificial intelligence tools are helping to improve retention by empowering HR teams to craft personalised engagement strategies that improve the quality of feedback and recognition for employees. These real-time feedback loops help to alert management to instances of outperformance, and the ability of AI systems to identify and reward employees for their efforts can help to create a fair reward system that can help all workers enjoy seeing their hard work acknowledged accordingly. Additionally, artificial intelligence can help to drive more engagement among employees by creating bespoke development plans that match the individual skills, preferences, and career goals of workers to a program designed to enhance their strengths and overcome any weaknesses. This can help to provide a sense of purpose that can prevent instances of 'quiet quitting' or turnover. Personalized Training Employee training and upskilling can also be a key factor in retention over long periods of time, and AI's ability to generate personalised, engaging, and accessible learning experiences can form the cornerstone of a more engaged and productive workforce. By delivering tailored content recommendations based on the monitoring of prospective skill gaps and preferred learning styles, artificial intelligence can deliver relevant and effective training materials. Because skill gaps can be a leading cause of employee turnover, mitigating these shortcomings can significantly reduce instances of staff quitting SME roles. AI can also deliver interactive experiences and simulated environments that offer far more engagement than simple text-based training, and the ability to access bespoke models at the click of a button means that employees can enhance their skills in between workloads. The implementation of AI training can help employees feel more valued and equipped to grow within their roles, boosting their contentment and longevity in their positions. Boosting Retention Retaining employees can be a challenge for SMEs with ambitions towards balancing budgets and sustaining growth strategies, but the emergence of artificial intelligence tools can help to deliver greater levels of efficiency in retaining talented staff for longer. Through predictive analytics and a personalised approach to employee management, training, and appraisals, more SMEs can improve their employee retention, preventing harmful and expensive turnover rates and building a consistent level of productivity into the future. Embracing AI tools today can make a significant difference in shaping your plans for tomorrow, and building an employee-first culture with the help of technology gives you the best chance of overcoming the challenges that all ambitious enterprises face as they continue to grow.
