Retention By The Numbers: How Does Your Company Measure Up?

(Editor’s Note: Today’s post is the second in a series being sponsored by Allied Van Lines, one of the world’s largest moving companies. The 2012 Allied Workforce Mobility Survey asked human resources professional about strategies, practices and performances related to mobility in the workplace.)

The second set of results in the 2012 Workforce Mobility Survey are out and the lead topic is onboarding.  Sharlyn Lauby, the HR Bartender, kicked off the analysis of the data with a valuable article on Employee Turnover Caused By Bad Onboarding Programs.  I encourage you to give it a read because retention is something all companies struggle with from time to time.

I want to build on Sharlyn’s post and talk about some of the other staggering survey results:

• Companies lose on average 23 percent of new hires before the one-year anniversary. Thirteen percent of companies lose half or more of their new hires in the first year.
• In addition, one-third of employees fail to meet company expectations in terms of productivity, and only 26 percent go on to become corporate influencers/ leaders.

When I think about any organization I’ve worked for as in the HR capacity, I can assure you that those results would be enough to get anyone in a leadership position to buy into the notion that we need to spend some money in onboarding new employees.  I can also tell you that I don’t know that I’ve ever seen data quite so dramatic and easily available to HR professionals.  Knowing that companies seem to be doing the tactics of onboarding without the strategic thought behind the desired outcomes is a major eye opener.  The first step is to share this with your leadership team.  The second step is to look at your own company results and see how you measure up.  Do you need to focus more time and money in this area?

Retention by the numbers

What if your company does not measure employee retention and/or productivity? You need to find a way to start.  Companies that measure the effectiveness of their retention and productivity rates among new employees perform better in three areas:

• Retaining new employees–  Do you know how many new hires are still employed after one year of hire?  On average, only 77%.
• Enabling new employees to reach productivity targets-  Do your new hires meet or surpass your company’s productivity goals?  Companies surveyed show that only 63% of new hires do and it takes an average of 8 months to see someone reach their full productivity.
• Developing new hires into corporate leaders and influencers-  As few as 26% of new hires become influential in their new company.

So, as the results indicate, a valuable use of time, resources and most importantly, money will be in the onboarding process.  The ability to retain those top professionals your recruiters work so hard to convert from candidates to hires needs to be followed up with an equally strong retention plan.

What are you doing to promote retention and practice good onboarding at your company?  For more information, be sure to check out the Allied Van Lines 2012 Workforce Mobility Survey site.  You’ll also find strong analysis from Kris Dunn, Steve Boese and Sharlyn Lauby there on a regular basis.