Effective Ways to Minimize Employee Turnover

Post from Guest Contributor Chris Blanton, editor of Ingenious Business Guide.
One unfortunate aspect of management is employee turnover. Many of your hires simply won’t work out. A new worker may develop personality clashes with coworkers, turn out to be incompatible in temperament or values, or may not fit in with the rest of the staff. Or they may not develop the required skill set rapidly enough.
You want to counsel out any employee who is a poor fit culturally to achieve a smooth running organization. Even the geniuses must go if they aren’t team players. Like Netflix asserts: No brilliant jerks! But what do you do if an otherwise acculturated employee doesn’t ramp up quickly enough? Do you show them the door or continue to try and train them?

Cherish Your Acculturated Employees
You want to do everything you can to retain your employees who are a cultural fit. Even those who cannot perform their job at present, you want to find a way to keep. But how do you accomplish this and still achieve the organization’s objectives? You want your people to be competent, even expert, at their jobs. So how can you handle under-performers and lessen turnover?
Be open to change their role within the organization. Maybe they can perform most of their duties but there are specific areas in which they are deficient. If so, explore changing the job description and can hand off the weak areas to other individuals. Return something else to their plate to compensate.
Good personnel managers ensure they overlap people’s skills to ensure several people are available to complete mission critical tasks. Creative managers adjust responsibilities to assign the best person to each job.
As long as you can accomplish your objectives does it matter who does each task? If you are willing to move people around to best suit their individual needs and the needs of the company, you will develop stronger, happier subordinates.
Also, you will be giving your staff the ability to stretch their comfort zone within the company. If you get a reputation for stretching workers’ professional development, you may find your people taking initiative and accepting responsibility outside their own niches.