A fan of Good to Great and author Jim Collins, Finnegan relates the current employee lifecycle to a doom loop.” A doom loop is a continuous cycle of recruitment, hire, replace. Because new employees don’t show up or they quit the company in the short term. Finnegan shares his strategy to retain employees and mitigate the high cost of employee turnover in your organization.
Doom loop, according to Jim Collins, is characterized by leaders continuously shifting strategies and consistently getting poorer results.
That describes HR and modern-day recruitment in many companies. It’s not only bad business. This approach is bad for the bottom line. Employee turnover rates have become the second or third major cost for corporations. The number of people quitting their jobs is at an all-time high. Because the number of job openings is also at an all-time high, losing existing employees only compounds the pain.
The responsibility for taming employee turnover extends beyond the walls of the HR department. The CFO must become involved to acknowledge that there are financial implications of employee turnover. Like sales, employee retention must be converted into the forecast which will ensure that executives have their eyes on employee retention too. Turnover and retention then secure a place on the financial dashboard, putting these metrics on full display, holding everyone accountable.
One highly effective tool to break the doom loom, according to Finnegan, are stay interviews. For best results, leaders and managers must gain the trust of their employees, to listen and address their concerns. When performed often and properly, employees stick around longer.