Companies in the manufacturing, production, logistics, and distribution sectors have been experiencing high employee churn rates for a number of years. In particular, turnover for roles like machine operators, truck drivers, and forklift operators has been skyrocketing.
Unfortunately, some of the causes are out of your control. However, there are many steps you can take to improve your business, create a positive working environment, and reduce employee turnover.
To help you out, we've compiled a list of the 10 best ways to reduce turnover in high-churn roles. We discuss enhancing employee engagement, providing growth opportunities, utilizing tech for better hiring, and much more.
1. Enhance Employee Engagement
Enhancing engagement among your staff is one of the best ways to reduce employee turnover. In fact, research has shown that employee engagement can reduce staff turnover by 87%. But how do you get your workers to be more engaged? Here are some strategies you can use:
Implement weekly one-on-one meetings between managers and employees to discuss progress, goals, and challenges.
Create a points-based system to reward employees for outstanding performance and reaching milestones.
Organize team-building activities like monthly team outings or virtual events to foster connections between team members. This is an excellent way to also boost employee morale.
2. Provide Growth Opportunities
Career growth is vital to improving employee retention. Simply put, if you invest in the growth and progression of your staff, they're far more likely to value their role within your company.
These are some of the practices you can implement to increase job satisfaction among your employees:
Learning and development programs: Provide regular online courses, workshops, and certifications to help employees expand their skill sets.
Clear career paths: Create detailed career progression maps for each role within your organization. These maps should outline the skills and experience required for career advancement.
Mentorship programs: Pairing junior staff members with more experienced ones effectively reduces employee churn rates. These experienced employees can be tasked with providing guidance and support to their less experienced colleagues.
3. Improve Onboarding and Training Process
Companies with strong onboarding processes are 103% more likely to improve metrics like new hire retention. So, if you're experiencing high employee turnover, you need to assess the effectiveness of your hiring and onboarding process.
Investing in comprehensive training for new employees ensures they're set up for success from day one and makes them less likely to leave the business.
Here are some ways you can improve your onboarding:
Role-specific training: Develop tailored training programs for the specific roles within your company. The programs should focus on the essential skills and responsibilities required for each role.
Comprehensive orientation: Create a structured first week designed to introduce recent hires to company culture, policies, and their new team members.
Regular check-ins: Arrange weekly meetings with new employees during their first three months to address concerns and provide support. You can also use these meetings as an opportunity to discuss their professional development and career growth.
4. Offer Competitive Compensation and Benefits
While it may be tempting to reduce your budget by offering lower wages, this makes your business more susceptible to the hidden costs of high turnover, such as operational disruption.
To attract and retain the best workers, it’s important to offer compensation that’s competitive within your industry and appropriate for the role. Without competitive pay, workers are more likely to look for other roles.
Besides salary, there are other benefits you can offer your staff to reduce high employee churn, like:
Flexible working: If possible, implement flexible hours and remote work options. This helps employees maintain a healthy work-life balance.
Health and wellness benefits: Offer comprehensive health insurance, mental health support, and wellness programs.
Performance-based bonuses: Creating a transparent bonus structure is a great way to nurture a culture of meritocracy and make your employees feel valued. These bonuses should be tied to both individual and company performance.
5. Foster a Positive Company Culture
Creating a positive work environment can have a significant impact on workers satisfaction and retention. If you think about it, it's quite straightforward: When employees look forward to going to work, they're more likely to stay with your company.
This is particularly important in industries synonymous with high turnover rates, such as manufacturing. In fact, the manufacturing industry currently has a turnover rate of 28.6%, which is much higher than the U.S. national average of 13.5%.
It's also important to create a culture of open communication within your business. This means implementing open-door policies and anonymous feedback channels.
6. Implement Effective Leadership and Management Practices
Highly productive and profitable workplaces have at least two things in common: strong leadership and effective management. If your employees are poorly led and managed, they're more likely to leave the company.
With that in mind, here are some strategies you can implement to improve your leadership and management practices:
Delegate meaningful tasks and allow autonomy in decision-making.
Set SMART goals for your employees and provide regular performance feedback.
Make sure you lead by example. This means demonstrating the company's values and work ethic through your approach to your role and in your daily interactions with staff.
7. Conduct Regular Stay Interviews
Stay interviews are another effective way to reduce employee churn. If you've not come across them before, they're interviews designed to gather feedback and insights from current employees, which you can use to improve your company's approach to retaining staff.
They work best when you use open-ended questions like:
"What would make your job more satisfying?"
"How can we better support your career goals?"
Remember, the information you gain from these interviews is only valuable if you act on it. So, create action plans based on interview insights and follow through on any commitments you make.
8. Utilize Technology for Better Hiring
51% of companies now use AI tools as part of their hiring process. But how does this relate to employee turnover?
Well, using AI recruitment tools can lead to better job-candidate matching, which makes it easier for you to hire the right people. Naturally, when you hire people who are perfectly suited to the role, they tend to stay at your company for a long time.
However, there is a caveat here. There are still bias concerns around AI tools, which have been known to screen out qualified candidates unfairly. Currently, the only remedy for this is to ensure any AI hiring process has human oversight.
If you're curious about the future of hiring, check out Traba's cutting-edge recruitment platform. We help companies in the manufacturing, production, logistics, and distribution sectors make smarter, faster recruitment decisions. As a result, you can reduce employee turnover and boost team performance.
9. Address Work-Related Stress
Most jobs come with some level of stress. Yet, if your employees are experiencing high levels of stress for a significant period, this is almost certain to lead to high employee churn rates.
Fortunately, there are a number of steps you can take to reduce work-related stress for your staff, such as:
Encouraging breaks and time off: Promote the use of vacation days and implement mandatory lunch breaks.
Optimize workload management: Review job roles regularly to ensure each employee has a manageable workload.
10. Conduct Exit Interviews and Act on Feedback
Of course, no matter how hard you try to reduce employee churn, there are always going to be people who leave your business. Still, you can use this to your advantage by conducting exit interviews to uncover the primary causes of turnover within your company.
During exit interviews, ask specific, actionable questions that focus on areas like management, working environment, and reasons for leaving. Then, review any exit interview data you gather and implement changes based on this feedback.
FAQs
Which AI tools do companies use for recruitment?
Many companies use AI-Powered Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) to help them recruit the right employees for the right roles.
How can I ensure my business offers competitive compensation?
The best way to ensure your company's salaries and hourly rates are competitive is to conduct thorough market research. This includes analyzing job postings, participating in salary surveys, and benchmarking your salaries against comparable organizations. Staffing services like Traba can provide market insights in your industry to help your business maintain competitive salaries and hourly rates.
How often should my company conduct stay interviews?
Generally, you should aim to conduct stay interviews twice a year for optimal effectiveness. This allows for regular check-ins while maintaining a manageable schedule for managers and HR teams.
Wrapping Up
Reducing turnover in high-churn roles requires a strategic approach where you take steps like enhancing engagement and offering competitive compensation. If you foster a supportive working environment and act on employee feedback, you can boost retention while improving productivity and building a more committed workforce.
