How to Mitigate Employee Turnover

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HOW TO MITIGATE EMPLOYEE TURNOVER STAY

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FROM THE LEADER IN AGENCY WORKFORCE MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS



INTRODUCTION

IMPROVING ECONOMY BRINGS NEW PROBLEMS With employees looking for higher wages as the economy

While no agency is impervious to staff turnover, the

improves, turnover rates are rising. In 2014, the caregiver

phenomenon is particularly severe when it comes to home

turnover rate rose 9% to an average of 61%, according to Aaron

care, which faces an impending caregiver shortage as

Marcum, founder and CEO of Home Care Pulse, and creator of

providers must meet the needs of a more numerous aging

the Private Duty Benchmarking Study. The survey measures

demographic in the years to come.

national and regional benchmarks on hundreds of agencies across North America. This year’s edition included aggregated data of 701 providers representing more than 1,000 locations.

You can track turnover rates by program to get a realistic picture. Typically, turnover will be lower in administration, day, and vocational programs, but higher in residential and

WHERE DOES YOUR AGENCY RANK?

in-home programs.

The survey analyzed where providers rank in the overall

HIGH TURNOVER RATES COST AGENCIES REAL MONEY

industry when it comes to turnover. 5% of agencies had a < 20% turnover rate

Higher turnover rates can lead to higher overtime

50% of agencies had a 50% turnover rate

costs, particularly among agencies that have weaker

61% was the average

scheduling and time & attendance systems.

5% of agencies had a turnover rate as high as 174%

Agencies spend extra money to train and hire suitable replacements. If turnover rates are too high, this represents a significant sunk cost for the agency that can not be recouped. By improving the environment at work and ensuring that your agency is optimally organized, it is possible to keep turnover at a healthy minimum.

DOES YOUR AGENCY NEED TO PAY MORE? Employers might think dissatisfaction with pay is the main factor behind turnover. Pay is not the only reason workers leave. Enhancing communication and scheduling can help. A recent survey found that pay was only one of several factors workers ranked as important. Other named factors related to scheduling and communication. Here are 22 tips for minimizing turnover without increasing pay or benefits:

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SCHEDULING AND ATTENDANCE 1. Get schedules organized. One of the biggest complaints employees have was a lack of advance notification and planning for schedules. Poor scheduling or last minute schedule changes can cause conflicts with employee’s home lives and cause them to seek alternative employment, even at a lower pay rate. Minimize constant rescheduling. Frequent rescheduling leads to a culture of frustration and uncertainty in your workforce and encourages absenteeism and turnover. A DSP will be much less motivated to show up if they are constantly being rescheduled, especially at short notice, even if they get overtime.

2. Track employee preferences and restrictions to maximize employee satisfaction with their shifts and to avoid calling employees to fill an open position they can not take. Integrate schedule preferences and restrictions into the new hire procedures.

3. Do not use on-call scheduling practices. On-call scheduling includes requiring employees to fill shifts or cancelling shifts on short notice. On Friday, April 10, 2015, the New York Attorney General asked for information

6. Use Task Scheduling to assign employees specific duties. Create a checklist for them to use. People like to know what they are meant to do.

7. Plan for holidays well in advance. Even though

on how employees are scheduled at certain large

DSP’s get extra pay for working on a holiday, few want

organizations. Companies were asked to provide details

to work on a holiday. Planning holiday schedules well

on the processes followed to schedule on-call shifts,

in advance will lead to greater satisfaction and better

whether they penalize employees who do not follow

attendance.

on-call procedures, and for any analysis that the they may have conducted on the cost savings associated with oncall shifts, including the impact on workers’ well-being.

4. Allow sufficient time between shifts for employees to go home and rest. Avoid calling in employees who have just finished a shift.

5. Use text or email alerts for employees to remind

8. Use scheduling and time & attendance to monitor frequent offenders. Employees who regularly show up late, leave early, or call in sick set a bad example to other employees. This causes lower productivity and increased overtime.

9. If using a time and attendance system, check the compliance levels. If it is not in the high 90th

them of their next shift with instructions of what they

percentile, investigate why there are so many edits.

are meant to do. This reduces absenteeism and helps

Excessive edits often are a factor in an ineffective

motivate employees.

time and attendance system, or one ineffectively implemented with inadequate procedures.

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SELF SERVICE 10. Publish schedules on the internet. Let employees see their schedule for the week, who they are working with, open positions, check their timesheets, view PTO balances, and more. This saves time for you and them.

11. Empower employees to request PTO online. This avoids employees getting frustrated if they end up playing phone tag or emailing back and forth with their manager, saving everyone time.

12. Use your website to make organization-wide announcements and engage your employees in your projects.

TELEPHONE TIMEKEEPING 13. Telephone timekeeping can help improve communication for agencies providing in-home services by automatically thanking employees for working on a holiday, wishing them happy birthday, or happy anniversary. An agency in Michigan reported that an employee called the main office to thank them for remembering their birthday even though the “Happy Birthday� message was played when they clocked-in using the agency telephone timekeeping system.

14. Voicemail can be used to communicate to employees what they are meant to do at different jobs or with different clients. Again, people like to know what they are meant to do. Record prompts that tell the employees about a particular client and their needs. The voice message will be automatically played when the employee clocks in.

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HUMAN RESOURCES 15. Use automated text or email alerts to remind employees about license expirations, upcoming training, reviews, or to send happy birthday and anniversary greetings.

16. Use an HR eNewsletter to keep different groups of

advanced from an entry-level position to a manager role is much more likely to be loyal than

employees updated about changes that affect them.

one who has done

Simple emails of praise at the completion of a project,

the same job for

monthly memos outlining achievements of a team to the

years in spite of

wider division, and peer-recognition programs are all ways

her hard work.

to inject positive feedback into a workforce. Also, consider

example, an agency with a large number of group

20. Provide DSPs with written guidelines on what factors will help them advance

homes has a monthly attendance competition. The

such as good

group home with the best attendance record gets a

attendance records. It is not enough to simply ‘’offer’’

pizza party at their location.

the potential for advancement — it is also important to

reporting accomplishments up the chain. A thank you note to the employee is a good practice. Copying higherups makes that note even more effective.

17. Use small bonuses to thank employees. For

18. Provide adequate training. Inadequately trained staff are more likely to leave. Provide opportunities for people to improve their skills via training sessions, presentations, and team assignments. Employees like to share what they know.

19. Make sure your agency is on top of review dates. Provide career paths for DSPs. Employees want to know where they could be headed and how they can get there. Annual reviews or mid-year check-ins are one obvious venue for these discussions. Also, encourage workers to

make sure that DSPs understand how they can advance in your business.

21. Try to promote from within your agency workforce, rather than recruiting outsiders. While this may sometimes be unavoidable, hiring an outsider to fill a vacancy when there are qualified employees with years of experience who could conceivably do the job can give the impression that you do not care about your employees’ accomplishments.

22. Conduct exit interviews. If they do not yield enough

come to HR with career questions and wishes throughout

information to help solve a retention problem, consider

the year. Employees like to feel like their hard work is

asking longer-tenured employees why they stay. Ask

being rewarded. Part of making sure your employees feel

questions such as:

this way is giving DSPs the opportunity to achieve the

“Why did you come to work here?”

non-tangible benefits of recognition and advancement.

“Why have you stayed? What would make you leave?”

Reward exceptionally smart, resourceful, and hard-

“What are your nonnegotiable issues?”

working DSPs by gradually increasing their responsibility

“What about your managers?”

and giving them more important titles. A DSP who has

“What would you change or improve?”

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SUMMARY While there are no quick fixes for turnover, making a few key changes can increase caregiver retention and help alleviate the challenges agencies face from caregiver shortages. Keep in mind these key guidelines:

1. Ensure the agency HR system tracks turnover rates. If programs in your agency have an average turnover rate above 61%, there should be room for improvement.

2. Effective scheduling helps mitigate the costs of overtime.

3. Flexible scheduling can help boost retention significantly, but requires managers or schedulers to be able to organize schedules quickly and effectively.

4. Schedule prompting helps minimize absenteeism. 5. Implementing employee self-service reduces the cost of managing a changing workforce.

6. Proactive HR departments can make a difference!

ABOUT MITC MITC provides modular workforce management solutions and services to support all the needs of agencies — time and attendance, advanced employee scheduling, service documentation, payroll rules and reporting engine, workforce analytics, payroll and billing integration, and more. For 25 years, MITC has grown to serve over 1,500 organizations (with anywhere form 5 to 10,000 employees) in the USA, the UK , Africa, Australia, Canada, Ireland and New Zealand. They have selected MITC to help control costs, save time, improve productivity and ensure compliance.

Visit www.mitcsoftware.com to learn more.

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