A human resource information system (HRIS) can prevent high employee turnover, which concerns any company that values and understands its employees’ contribution to its success.
Hiring new employees to fill the vacant position is time-consuming and expensive. Companies spend resources selecting, hiring, onboarding, and training employees and wouldn’t want to go over the same process after three months or a year. They want to concentrate on hitting growth goals.
78% of business leaders rank employee retention as a significant high-priority business need. Still, they find it challenging to figure out how to prevent it from happening or reduce turnover rates. Some companies only conduct exit surveys when an employee leaves the company, which doesn’t mitigate the problem.
Focusing on why employees leave is a wrong approach. Instead, companies should be more concerned with those still working, find out their challenges and what improvements they want, and put plans in place to implement these suggestions.
Aside from getting suggestions from existing employees, companies can also invest in advanced tools, such as HRIS, to help manage and reduce employee turnover.
Before we delve into how an HRIS can help reduce your turnover rates, let’s consider the leading causes of employee turnover rates:
Causes of Employee Turnover Rate
Some of the causes of high employee turnover include:
Little or no training
Companies now realise the importance of a smooth and seamless onboarding culture incorporating training.
However, the problem is that most companies do not provide these employees with continuous training opportunities. Unfortunately, the training usually ends at the onboarding stage. A great onboarding process will not make your employees stay if relevant training does not continue.
According to a Gallup survey, about 32% of employees leave because their companies do not provide opportunities for career advancement.
There is a need to provide old employees with constant training to upgrade their skills and acquire new skills to remain relevant and competitive in our fast-paced, technology-driven business world.
Without adequate and continuous training, their skills will soon become outdated, and then the fear creeps in of being left behind or stagnant. The next logical step for any ambitious employee is to search for better opportunities regardless of the possibility of a lesser stipend.
Companies wishing to reduce their turnover rates must invest in training their workforce. Sure, it may cost time and money, but it also improves employees’ work quality and productivity. And this will bring high returns on investment. It’s a win-win situation.
The HR department and managers should determine the type of training employees need, those who need it, the method of training, and the time to train. Seminars, workshops, and their like shouldn’t be strange to your employees. It should be regular.
Lack of diversity in the workplace
Innovative organizations have recognized the need for diversity in the workplace. Aside from hiring people from different cultures, backgrounds, genders, etc., it’s also about ensuring the equal participation of these employees.
Employees who perceive that they are treated as minorities and denied inclusion, which other employees enjoy, will not hesitate to exit the company. Conversely, those who feel accepted are less likely to leave.
Diversity and inclusion extend beyond just hiring people from diverse cultures and backgrounds. Ensuring that all employees have equal opportunities to climb the career ladder and succeed in their endeavours is one of the ways employers can reduce turnover rates. In addition, increasing the performance and compensation of the so-called minorities is also essential.
Employees are more confident and engaged in the workplace when they observe no discrimination. They readily express their ideas because they are not afraid of being ignored or sidelined.
Employers can also benefit from celebrating diversity in their employees. For example, Science Daily reports that companies with high racial diversity earn about 15 times more sales revenue than those with low levels.
They have access to many ideas that will improve business results. In addition, it will boost the company’s reputation and attract suitable candidates when hiring.
Poor Employee Selection
When selecting the best hire for your company, neglecting prospective employees’ experience, skills, and cultural fit and relying solely on the gut is a wrong approach that can backfire.
Even at the peak of desperation to fill this position, the wrong employee will have significant consequences for you, your company, and the employee.
Experiences and skills may be easy to evaluate, but recruiting professionals need to take their time when assessing cultural fit. Assess candidates’ values, personalities, and communication styles to see if they align with the company’s values.
Lack of organizational mobility
Internal mobility is an effective way to increase employee engagement in the company. When employees stay in a position for years, there are no real opportunities for growth.
According to Gallup’s Research, employees mainly seek change to expand their knowledge and use their strengths.
A study by Workplace Trends discovered that employee engagement increases by up to 49% due to internal mobility opportunities. The more engaged employees there are, the more sales and profit there will be.
The advantages and benefits of mobility in the organization are not one-sided. While there would be a significant increase in employee motivation, according to SHRM, 60% of promoted workers performed significantly better than employees hired externally into similar positions.
Employers also benefit significantly from this as internal mobility lowers recruiting costs. The onboarding process will take less time because the existing employee knows the company’s culture and brings institutional knowledge to the role.
Also, there is an improved turnover rate as employees who are allowed to develop continually are twice as likely to say they’ll spend their career with your company.
Being overworked
Employees are confident that companies that care and support healthy work-life balance are worth investing time and effort into. Employees have other issues, such as relationships, children to look after, grocery shopping, and daily commute.
According to a study by the Philadelphia-based global management consulting firm, Hay Group, more than one in four employees at the organization not perceived to support a work-life balance plan to leave their employer within the next two years.
High turnover rates aren’t the only consequences of a negative work-life balance. The NIOSH tested a group of 40,000 workers and found that healthcare costs were nearly 50% higher for workers who reported high levels of workplace stress than workers who reported lower levels of workplace stress.
Lack of feedback and recognition
Giving and receiving regular employee feedback is vital in any organization that wishes to retain its employees. Not providing feedback can lead to confusion, as employees will have unanswered questions about their performance and relevance in the company.
Giving feedback to employees about their performance will help them adjust and improve. It tells them if they are going in the right direction, and if not, directs them.
When managers understand and appreciate the essence of recognizing employees, it boosts the latter’s self-esteem and encourages them to perform well at their duties.
According to research at Universite Laval in Quebec led by Dr. Jean-Pierre Brun, the Chair in Occupational Health and Safety Management, the researchers discovered that lack of employee recognition could cause stress in the workplace. While it’s not the primary cause of stress in the workplace, it’s undoubtedly one of them.
A lack of recognition hurts employees. It will lead to less motivation, resulting in underperformance at the workplace. If it continues, the employee might begin looking for another job.
Little opportunity for decision-making
Micromanaging employees will only stifle their creativity and have them waiting for a command before they execute anything. In addition, micromanagement will affect employee morale, work performance, and confidence, eventually leading to staff turnover.
Restrict micromanagement to training new employees or coaching underperforming employees. Employees who have proven capable of carrying out their duties should be allowed some autonomy. It will motivate them to increase their creativity and productivity.
To reduce the tendency to micromanage, companies should hire the right people for the job and delegate tasks to those who can handle it with little or no mistakes.
The culture problem
When hiring new employees, companies focus on their educational background, skills, and relevant job experience. However, they rarely consider the cultural fit of the individuals if their values align with the organization.
When these employees resume, they realize they are not in tune with the company culture, resulting in low morale and unproductivity.
Companies can combat this problem by ensuring they have a strong culture visible to the candidate during the hiring process so that if the candidate is not comfortable, they can pull out of the process.
A strong culture should include a healthy work environment where employees are happy and satisfied while maintaining professionalism and contributing to organizational goals.
5 Ways Hris Software Reduce Employee Turnover Rates
Having identified the causes of high employee turnover and how employers can reduce it, let us also point to the importance of using well-designed human resource software to ease the process. Some of the ways HRIS software can reduce high employee turnover rate include:
1. Identify and analyze turnover patterns
The detailed reports and analytics that HRIS generates help identify turnover information and exit patterns.
Analytics can provide helpful insight, such as employees tend to quit at higher rates in August when children go back to school or when employees are moved to a specific department under a certain manager. It can assist you with making decisions that will drastically reduce turnover.
2. Streamlined onboarding
A streamlined onboarding process improves employee satisfaction, making them feel part of the organization when they join the company. HRIS software can provide a seamless onboarding process and enable training your employees and providing relevant learning materials from a single platform.
With an effective HRIS system, new hires can sign documents electronically. They can also use the self-service portals to learn about the company’s business goals, stay informed on its activities, and catch up on company news and business goals.
3. Training and learning opportunities
A PricewaterhouseCoopers report states that millennial employees referred to training and development as the top benefit of working in a company. They ranked it higher than perks such as free health care and pensions. It shows how much employees value a company that invests in training its workforce.
The strongest motivator for a person to commit to your company’s success and maintain loyalty is knowing that the company sees and values its potential and has a structure for it to advance to progress within the company.
4. Performance tracking
HRIS solutions allow companies to determine skill sets, assign goals and track performance and accomplishments. This performance data is very beneficial to both employees and managers. When employees feel that business objectives align with their skill sets, projects are challenging, and they get rewarded for their accomplishments, they are likelier to stay with a company.
The software can empower managers to monitor their progress, make improvements between scheduled reviews, assess employees, provide relevant feedback, determine appropriate assignments, and develop succession plans to promote exceptional employees.
5. Gauge employee satisfaction
Employers can only know how to keep their employees satisfied and happy if they get feedback from them. And one of the ways to get such feedback is through a survey.
When made anonymous, surveys allow employees to give honest feedback without reservations. With surveys, the management can receive less biased and relevant feedback to drive policy changes to improve employee work experience and productivity.
HRIS software should contain a robust survey module where employees can fill out surveys to voice concerns about the organization. It also generates reports to help the management analyze the impact of the new policies they’ve introduced on the employees.
Conclusion
Companies that can retain their employees will save themselves unnecessary replacement costs and focus their efforts on business growth. They’ll also have an excellent business reputation, attracting top talent and clients.
Using HRIS software makes it easier to achieve this goal. The features of an effective one help to increase employee engagement and ensure the management immediately addresses their concerns.
