Speaking of Business: Fight turnover with policies that keep workers happy

Q: I?m losing key members of my team, and my customers are complaining about poor service. I have explained that we are training new staff as quickly as possible, and I?ve requested that they please bear with us. My question is, how can I put an end to this high turnover before I lose valued customers, or worse yet, my business?

A: Employee turnover is a fact of business life. If the rate of turnover gets too high, it can start eating at the company like cancer. A recent study showed that the associated costs of replacing each employee costs a company 25 percent to 275 percent of his or her salary!
In today?s world of one-to-one marketing and customer-relationship management, it?s essential to reduce turnover to help key employees nurture successful business relationships with customers. As many businesses wrestle with changing from company-based organizations to customer-based organizations, employees face accountability, technology and behavioral challenges that must be addressed by management.
I use a system called PDP to help manage employee satisfaction and to gain better insight as to what motivates each employee. However, the best way to reduce turnover is to initially hire the best employee with the right skills and behavior for each position to start with. Hiring to fill a slot is the last thing you will want to do unless you want to be a great firefighter.
Some questions you need to answer are: Why do your employees leave you? What types of support and process changes do you need to implement to make it easier for valuable people to stay on the job? Do you know what motivates each employee? Do your people have the right knowledge, skills, behavior, and attitudes to meet your company?s customer-service goals? Are employee expectations clear and being met?
Three areas need to be addressed to help find answers to the above questions: expectations and attitudes, work environment, and management.
? Whether spoken or unspoken, your expectations have a powerful impact on your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and are the key drivers of your attitudes. Your attitudes, in turn, influence performance, commitment and job satisfaction. Research by Inscape Publishing Co. shows that when companies implement clearly defined, well-communicated expectations, their employees are happier, more fulfilled and more successful. Without a clearly defined mandate, many employee expectations go unspoken or unrealized. Unless your employee?s expectations are managed properly, workplace satisfaction will be adversely affected. I use a Web-based program called TrakStar from Promantek to assist companies with this.
? An open, sensitive work environment, where people understand each other and work together is another key to keeping valued employees. Learn how to recognize different behavioral styles, and you?ll be on your way to understanding your boss?s behavior, your team?s behavior and your own way of getting things done.
Build rapport with fellow workers, employees and customers to ensure your customer-service message is getting through to everyone. Understand that people like people who are like themselves. I try to have all my clients develop a Code of Conduct. It helps employees know if their actions are proper when there are not rules in place to assist them.
? Management?s role in creating a customer-focused culture must be consistent, planned and clarified.
In summary, if you encourage employees to be open and honest about their expectations, and establish consistent guidelines and training for employees in understanding diverse behavioral styles in building rapport, you will likely reduce the risk of losing key employees in today?s volatile work environment. As I have mentioned, there are tools available to assist you in achieving the goal of reducing turnover, and thus, achieving success.

Windsor resident Russell Disberger is a founding member of Aspen Business Group, a Northern Colorado-based specialty consulting and venture capital firm. He can be reached by e-mail at russell@aspenbusinessgroup.com, or at (970) 396-7009.

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