Thinking/Perspectives

Hire Once

Don't treat turnover as inevitable. Three parts of a retention system anyone can use to hire well once, then keep the people you already paid to bring in.

"Employee turnover" is shorthand for "people don't want to work here."

Employers resent turnover for good reason: it's expensive. Departures interrupt business operations and ding efficiency and profitability. Departures also scrap any initial investment in onboarding and training. All in, an employee leaving costs their employer between 10% and 30% of their salary. That's on top of wages already spent plus the cost to source their replacement (Source: American Progress).

Yikes.

At some level, turnover is a natural part of life and business. People move. Family situations change. Work aspirations evolve. We can't control those dynamics. A "Hire Once" company does its best to control for all the other reasons employees leave: lagging compensation, toxic culture, and few options for professional growth. To mitigate those risks, "Hire Once" companies have three basic goals.

To make employees feel:

Rewarded
Healthy
On a path toward growth

Each element can help drive retention on its own. Taken together, they form a comprehensive retention strategy. A "Hire Once" mindset takes practice and time to implement, but it's the antidote to the financial misery of high turnover: $100,000s in savings.