I think employee retention has at least a medium effect on overall productivity.
Retaining employees will increase productivity because the employees have all been trained in their jobs and are now just working to streamline their work. On the other hand, low retention means having to traing new employees and haveing to monitor their work to make sure it is up to the correct standards.
Stephen,
High employee turnover impacts student retention as well. Students connect with employees of the college, most often with their Admissions reps. Frequently when those connections leave, that severs the primary connection that the student has with the college. If things get rough, it is then easy for the student to walk away. Your comments regarding productivity and training are really key, too. All of these factors can significantly impact your bottom line.
Dr. Patricia Kapper
Our organization was "bought out" about a year ago. Since then, we have lost several key people and none have been replaced. As a result, their responsibilities have been given to people who are already overworked. The result is an overall dissatisfaction and frustration of the majority of employees. It seems to me that once the climate shifts to- more work without compensation-, employees quickly lose any sense of commitment to the organization. And without that in place, people are more likely to look elsewhaere for work.
susan,
That is so unfortunate. Employee morale is negatively affected and students begin to sense that something is wrong. Students connect to the school through individual employees. If they leave, students lose their connection and can easily decide to drop out. I wish you the best.
Dr. Patricia Kapper
Employee retention has a tremendous effect on the overall productivity of an organization because you have several or more departments working to not only meet their own department goals, but to meet the whole company's goal together. When one is gone the rest are picking up the extra work, which then means it can cause the rest of your employee's to "burnout".
Katherine,
If this kind of situation is allowed to extend beyond a reasonable length of time, it begins to impact overall morale as well. Some turnover is a good thing as it has the potential to bring in new blood and new ideas. It is when that turnover becomes excessive that the problems you mention begin to impact the whole institution. Hopefully, management will recognize the signs of this becoming a problem and will put in motion practices to address the issue. If not, employees need to feel comfortable speaking up with ideas for resolving the problem.
Dr. Patricia Kapper
Just like it explaines in this course there is always a cycle if you have turnover because it can cause so much burnout in the rest of the staff when going through the replacement period. There are only so many hours in the day and unfortunately with turnover there are things that don't happen in the timeliness that they should; which in turn slows down the overall productivity.
Susan,
It does. It also negatively impacts employee morale of those needing to pick up the slack because of the vacancy. Management needs to keep its eye on employee turnover. When it is becoming excessive, it is time to explore the reasons why and identify ways to resolve. It is also important to determine how much turnover is voluntary vs . involuntary. Are there other issues driving this situation?
Dr. Patricia Kapper
Depending on the productivity of the retained personnel, working with the same group builds trust and strong, dependable working relationships. With high turnover the "well-oiled machine" effect takes longer to develop and could be disruptive to the overall culture.
Gayle,
Good point, Gayle. It also impacts the morale of the group with many resenting the person who left because of the need to redistribute the workload, usually with no additional compensation. As you say, it is disruptive and continue to be disruptive until the new hire is integrated into the group. Between recruiting and allowing for the learning curve to work through, it can take up to six months for the productivity to return to normal levels.
Dr. Patricia Kapper
Huge effect! It was a good reminder to see how much impact in the training, some things I hadn't thought of. I was the Director of a college where my Director of Admissions turned over the team almost 200% in less than 9 months. It takes a long time to recover from that because with Admissions you are constantly having to train new people on the school, get them interested and passionate about the school, and educate them so they can sell a prospective student on why our school is the best one for their needs. Enrollment suffered greatly and although I am not there anymore, by choice, it is interesting to see the results of their continued culture of firing staff so quickly. It is hard to be productive when employees constanly have to make up the difference while new employees are being trained.
Another example is I just got a call today stating I would be training two new campus directors. A week of my time from my campus will be gone as well as a week at both of those campuses.
Charisse ,
Those are two great examples of how turnover can impact a campus. Morale is bound to suffer and once that turns sour, it is very difficult to recover. When vacancies occur, someone has to pick up the slack thereby impacting their work as all. My experience has been that in most schools Admissions will suffer from the highest turnover rate. That will impact everything all the way down the line. Our students connect first with their Admissions rep and if that person goes away before the student has an opportunity to make solid connections with others, it is very easy for that student to choose to leave as well. Now your retention rate is impacted, which impacts your accreditation, etc.
Dr. Patricia Kapper
How much effect do you think employee retention has on the overall productivity of an organization? Please explain your answer.
