What is the Great Resignation Costing You and How Can You Fix It?
Almost all of us in the working world are familiar with the Great Resignation at this point. But what is the cost of the Great Resignation? And how as an organization can you increase an employee’s likelihood of staying?
Let’s first take a closer look at what the Great Resignation is. Beginning in 2021, thousands of people began quitting their jobs, either for opportunities elsewhere or to leave the workforce altogether. Individuals are choosing to leave for a multitude of reasons. There are many pandemic-related reasons that individuals are leaving the workforce, whether it be difficulty finding childcare, health concerns, or a different issue. But many employees are also citing burnout, increased stress, better opportunities, starting their own businesses, or simply higher pay.
Losing employees is difficult for a multitude of reasons. There are both hard and soft costs associated with employee turnover. For the soft costs, remaining employees can feel defeated as tasks are offset to the team until a backfill is identified. That shift of workload can also cause lost productivity and missed deadlines. And it can even encourage other employees to consider leaving the company as well. All of these can have negative impacts to an organization without blatantly hitting the bottom line. As for the hard costs, a study by Predictive Index puts the financial implication of turnover as roughly $11,000 per employee. PeopleKeep estimates it costs on average 6 to 9 months of an employee’s salary to train and recruit a backfill.
These costs associated with employee turnover have many employees looking inward as to how they can boost their retention rates and remain a desirable place of employment.
One way employers are working through this is to look at the benefits they are offering. More organizations are offering business coaching as a benefit to employees. Business coaching shouldn’t only be available for the elite, high performance, and executive leaders. Coaching can make employees feel valued and supported, which in turn can increase employee engagement. Offering your employees access to confidential coaching also gives them an outside perspective for the issues they are facing at work. Our coaches at KfG help employees craft action plans so they are equipped with a roadmap to address their issues.
Here are 5 ways making business coaching a priority can impact your business.
The average cost of one employee resignation is $11,000, according to a study by Predictive Index. But ⅔ of employee turnover is classified as preventable.
Almost 65% of the employee workforce feels unengaged. Business coaching shows employees you value them and reinvigorates their motivation and drive.
Studies show that employees stay 2x as long at companies that offer and encourage talent mobility. Coaching further helps an employee career plan and formulate how they will achieve their career goals.
About 60% of employees feel organizational culture would improve with the enhancement of skills and personal development.
¾ of staff want an inclusive work environment. Coaching helps employees feel included and empowered with an organization.
Coaching is proven to have positive effects on employee morale and company culture. Employees are also more likely to recommend an organization to colleagues when they feel supported and respected.
Let’s look at an example of how confidential coaching could impact retention at an organization. Imagine you begin offering business coaching as a free benefit for your employees. You have a top performer sign up for a coaching session. In that session, the employee confides in their coach that they are feeling overwhelmed with the amount of work they have gained in the last few weeks. In fact, the workload is causing them to work late most days and as a result, they recently missed their daughter’s softball championship. The employee is loyal and really loves the company but feels discouraged by their current situation and they don’t see a way it can improve.
Their eyes are beginning to wander to other organizations that have similar job openings. In their session with the coach, the coach will ask probing questions to the employee to help them better identify and determine the best step forward. In this situation, the coach may ask the employee, “If you were able to achieve better work-life balance in your current position, would you prefer to stay at the organization?” In this scenario, the employee will say yes.
What the coach will then do is help the employee craft an action plan in order to achieve their goal of better work-life balance. They will strategize together to showcase all-new factors that are negatively impacting the employee, the boundaries the employee is looking to create, and they can even help the employee practice bringing the topic up to their supervisor. Because of the support that the coach was able to provide, the employee now has a clearer understanding of their goals as well as a detailed action plan for how to achieve them. A few conversations with a coach could easily retain this employee within this organization as the employee now feels: supported, empowered, and motivated.
Coaching can impact 6 different areas of the employee experience; retention, engagement, development, mobility, inclusion, and onboarding. Being able to impact all 6 of these areas by investing in business coaching can pay dividends to your employees in a variety of ways. Business coaching shows your employees you care about them as individuals and want them to have resources that support healthy mental health as well as their career path. It can create a work environment that is exciting and inspiring. Don’t wait any longer to curb the effects of the Great Resignation within your organization. Reach out to us for more information!
Celebrating your success,
Krista Ryan