Stop the talent drain: 5 steps to beat back turnover

Gather regular, timely feedback

Your people constantly face new challenges that increase their chances of quitting. To spot these problems before they grow, you need more than just the occasional survey.

Instead, try to stay tuned in to the reality of their lives. Gather ongoing feedback so you’re always in the loop. Make it easy for employees: provide a simple, app-based tool that lets them submit updates at the right time with just a few clicks.

At this stage, you’re not asking complicated questions—just prompting each person to rate various aspects of their work life on a sliding scale. This simple approach streamlines the process and yields measurable, scalable data.

The more regularly employees submit their feedback, the better. That means you’re acting on up-to-date info rather than yesterday’s news.

Likewise, you want as many employees to participate as possible, giving you a holistic view of your workforce.

Track a consistent set of core variables

The quality of information you gather makes all the difference. When feedback is consistent and focused, it puts your decisions on firmer ground.

If you pose too many varied questions, you can overload your employees and make your analysis more complicated than it needs to be. More importantly, you risk missing the most crucial issues if you zero in on factors that have only a marginal impact on engagement or turnover.

Instead, simplify your data gathering. Track a limited number of variables that speak to employees’ core expectations. Ask how they feel about concrete realities such as workloads, communication, relationships, and work schedules. That’s your ticket to meaningful, actionable insights.

Consistency is your friend here. You create a reliable standard to measure against over time by homing in on a specific set of variables. If you notice a significant change, that’s a signal to look closer.

Turn data into meaningful, actionable insights

Employee satisfaction scores like eNPS can be too broad. Your managers, executives, and HR teams need more specific information to have a measurable impact on turnover rates.

Consider a solution that brings all your data together, offering multiple levels of fine-grained analysis:

• Individual: Take Maria, for example. How does she feel about different aspects of her work life? What makes her happy or unhappy at work? These insights help managers stay updated and support their regular check-ins with team members.
• Team: What’s the overall atmosphere in Maria’s department? Is Maria’s experience unique, or do her colleagues feel the same? Understanding the team’s climate allows managers to identify and address broader issues before they escalate.
• Organization-wide: How does Maria’s team stack up against others in the company? Taking a holistic perspective, executives can assess turnover risks across the enterprise and plan to address systemic issues.

Time is also crucial. Decision-makers need a clear view of change, both daily and long-term. Your system should keep a detailed, regularly updated record of how employee sentiment evolves. This way, you’re always working with the latest information.

Alert decision-makers proactively

Even if information is accessible, busy managers and other decision-makers lack the bandwidth to monitor every individual or situation. As a result, they can easily miss opportunities to act before unhappy employees reach a point of no return.

How can you address this challenge? Bring essential insights straight to decision-makers with proactive, real-time alerts.

For example, you could see alerts when the data indicates a key team member is at risk of quitting. Likewise, the system could warn you if an entire team is heading for burnout. You should then be able to drill down further to see more details about the situation.

These early warnings buy you invaluable time. You can anticipate and get ahead of turnover, instead of reacting when employees have already decided to leave.

Investigate and resolve specific employee concerns

Knowing about the problem is only the start. Real success depends on swift, efficient, and collaborative intervention—so you can understand and solve the issues behind the warning signs you’ve noticed.

Take Maria, for example. The system flags her as a turnover risk, and her data shows growing discontent with her workload and schedule. But you need to look closer to get to the heart of the matter.

At this point, Maria’s manager could check in with her to find out what’s going on. Your system should facilitate this investigative process, enabling you to promptly identify and tackle the issue. For example, Maria’s manager can document any efforts to address the problem, creating a complete record accessible to authorized personnel.

Suppose a more sensitive issue comes to light. In that case, HR personnel should be able to intervene with a streamlined case management workflow. This tool allows them to view all the details about Maria’s case and work toward a resolution.

Make turnover a preventable problem

Turnover will always be with us, but you can control it by staying on the same page as your people.

The process is simple to understand. But there’s no way to execute it with manual workflows alone. You need the right solution to unify and streamline all these operations.

Is DIY an option? That route is complicated and expensive.

A makeshift system, cobbled together from various other tools, will have many gaps that make the process unmanageable. A fully custom solution could clean out your budget without guaranteeing results.

But there’s a smoother path: using ready-to-deploy software designed to manage workforce disruptions.

Take Vantage Point, from PrevailHQ. It’s a lightweight SaaS solution that simplifies every step in the process, from data gathering and analysis to case management. Explore all your options and act today to ensure your top talent stays with you.