Reducing Staff Turnover

Reducing Staff Turnover
So here we go again. No sooner is the recession over than the first reports of skill shortages and spiralling staff turnover start circulating. This leads, as it always does, to mild frenzy among HR professionals whose job it is to respond to the call from line managers to ‘do something’ when a key employee has the effrontery to leave. Those of us who were around in the late 1980s will remember, with foreboding, the panic that drove many employers to throw money at people both to join and to stay. We also remember, with a wince, the difficulty of ‘buying out’ market supplements and car schemes long after they had ceased to be useful. So are employers right to press the panic button again? Should they brace themselves once more for long-forgotten turbulence in the labour market?
The short answer is ‘probably not’, but with certain important caveats. The first is that, this time around, concern over staff retention is about quality not quantity. Comp...