IPMA Takeaway: Reduce Turnover by Addressing Your Own Culpability
The national voluntary turnover rate is 20%, and that turnover costs employers $187 billion a year due to lost productivity and the need to retrain. What's more, 70% of the reason employees leave is because of factors controllable by their direct supervisors.
That bit of sobering information was shared by Jim Rowell of Rising Sun Consultants during a session titled “Inspiring Leaders to Reach New Horizons" at the In-plant Printing and Mailing Association (IPMA) conference in June.
Most employees don’t actually leave for more money, as managers believe, Rowell insisted; most leave because of the manager, the culture or the work environment.
The majority of employees (71%) are either not engaged or are actively disengaged, he continued — yet managers spend most of their time on this last group. Instead, Rowell suggested, we need to build a culture where the actively disengaged (the ones who have already quit but haven’t left yet) are not welcome. Then managers can instead spend most of their time on those who truly buy in to the organization’s business goals.
Rowell listed these 10 keys of effective supervision. (Hint: read the first letters of each line for a surprise. OK, so it’s not a great surprise, but do it anyway.)
- Support Growth
- Unite Your Team
- Praise Others
- Expect Excellence
- Require Accountability
- Value What You Believe
- Instill Independence
- Share Continuously
- Optimize Ownership
- Realign Your Efforts
Bob has served as editor of In-plant Impressions since October of 1994. Prior to that he served for three years as managing editor of Printing Impressions, a commercial printing publication. Mr. Neubauer is very active in the U.S. in-plant industry. He attends all the major in-plant conferences and has visited more than 170 in-plant operations around the world. He has given presentations to numerous in-plant groups in the U.S., Canada and Australia, including the Association of College and University Printers and the In-plant Printing and Mailing Association. He also coordinates the annual In-Print contest, co-sponsored by IPMA and In-plant Impressions.
