What is the revolving door costing you?

Summary: Do you have a revolving door with your employees? People joining and leaving your team. What is it costing you?

We are all familiar with revolving doors – by design they allow many people to enter and exit seamlessly into a building. This is a great idea for restaurants, shopping centers, hotels, etc.  Do you have a revolving door with your employees? Do you have people who join your team and leave your team on a regular basis?

Terence Faircloth via Fliker

It’s possible the positions they are filling are entry level and require little training so on the surface while you don’t like the revolving door of staff – you are not worried about it.

That’s fine – the question is “should you be worried?”.

The short answer is “yes” because it is costing you, it just may not be obvious how.  Here are a few thoughts to consider:

Time to train. No one and no job is “plug and play”. Everyone needs some type of training or knowledge before they can be independent. How long does it take you train someone? How much time does another employee spend with this person to train them.

Cost = (new employee hourly rate x hours of training) + (currently employee hourly rate x hours of training)

How long until proficient? This is the time between training and the time needed to be proficient or up to normal work rate. Think of it as the time needed before the person is working at the same as an experienced employee.

Cost = new employee hourly rate x hours until proficient

Who is answering the questions? Until the person has the right amount of knowledge, someone will be answering questions. In other words another person will have to stop doing their work and spend time with new person until they understand the answer to the questions. Sometimes the questions are one word answers “Bob handles that” to “Here is our process for a new order”.

Cost = current employee hourly rate x hours answering questions

The biggest cost of all is actually beyond the dollars – it is your reputation. Are you earning a bad reputation for the way people come and go?

As you can see there is always a cost – are you willing to take it on?

What has been the cost of your revolving door?