I’ve told a few friends and may have mentioned it on Twitter. I’m pleased now to officially announce that I’ll be a regular columnist to American Express OPEN Forum in the Money section. My first article, The High Cost of Employee Turnover, is now up on the site.
I’ve been intrigued by this topic for a while and wanting to write about it since my About.com days. I see so many businesses that are short-sighted about how they treat their employees, not realizing that a few extra dollars in pay or perks is probably cheaper in the long run than the turnover they’re experiencing.
Turnover also creates a bad customer experience (and, conversely, seasoned employees usually create a better customer experience). There are a couple of convenience stores in my neighborhood. One treats its employees like robots and can’t seem to keep anyone for more than about a year. The other treats every employee like a manager. Most of them have been there five years or more, and one has been there over ten. Guess which when I go to 90% of the time?
I’ve seen several articles and even some online calculators for turnover costs, but most of them weren’t thorough enough about the soft costs. Also, a lot of them either don’t explain exactly how to do the calculations, or the way they say to do it is wrong (for example, calculating lost productivity based on revenue per employee rather than profit per employee mistakenly inflates the calculated cost).
To learn more, check out The High Cost of Employee Turnover. Retweets much appreciated.
Oh…almost forgot. MUCH thanks to my friend Kate Lister for referring me for this gig.