Hi,
My organization (1700 current total staff) is facing a high turnover rate. HR Department has developed a good exit questionnaire supported by a computerized system to calculate and identify trends of turnover. For many months, the number “ONE” reason for staff turnover has been identified as “Personal Reason”, scoring 40% out of the total responses over a year period. This drops down to 14% for better salary as second reason and 7.5% for management style as third. I believe that “Personal Reason” is not the real reason because employees are reluctant to answer honestly because, including existing staff, they feel that the organisation is failing to present effective solutions/tactics to the issues arising. General Staff Morale is really down. Although HR has succeeded in calculating these percentages, however no action plan has been placed nor do we have an effective retention strategy to tackle this serious issue. I am aware that there are a number of factors that need to be resolved in order to at least put a limit to the turnover issue (i.e. effective retention strategy, improve communication and staff morale, and above all empower HR image, since the HR department is seen as a processing department – not been involved deeply into strategic thinking. I am now involved in a project (which is still being planned for) to visit all departments and listen to their problems / suggestions, both at a managerial level as well as individual employee. The main objective is to show HR presence, try to put hands on problems before reaching a high degree of gravity and possibly leading to resignations, as well as providing advice and solutions. Do you feel that this project will be beneficial, especially that we have a great number of departments (healthcare environment)? Should we postpone this project after taking other measures? What if we schedule a meeting with one department, and another one is more in need of our presence? How can we control/group the number of complaints and find solutions for them? What if managers/employees are reluctant to participate or do not see the benefit of doing so? What are the tools/action plan for the success of this project and how can we measure this?

Any help or guidance regarding this issue is very welcome………

Thank you.

Rafif Alam