An Example in Reducing Turnover

I was working with a company that felt they had a turnover problem. I used the ITEM Model to help them through each step of the process.

I first helped them measure their turnover using historical data. We found that their annual turnover had in fact been increasing over the last few years, going from about 15% to 17%. Thus, we used INSIGHT to IDENTIFY a turnover problem. I also informed them that the additional 2% of turnover increased their replacement and training costs by millions of dollars, since replacing each employee costs anywhere from 1.5x to 3x their annual salary, based on multiple studies. In their case, the additional costs were in the single-digit millions. The C-Suite was interested in the next steps as well, as everyone had something to gain.

The challenge was they didn’t know what the root cause of turnover was. I asked them to conduct an experiment by providing a simple survey to their managers to rate whether each of...