A hard reality of the holiday season is the anticipation of spring turnover. For a lot of workers who are planning on stepping away from their current roles, they will most likely make their move after the holidays.
Recently cleared-out empty desks, whispers of resignations and farewell presents surface throughout, and the reality hits hard—it is the post-holiday season, and labour turnover has struck again.
It is not just ‘new year, new me’ for the workforce anymore; it is ‘new year, new job’.
Now that the post-holiday period is a salient time for an organisation’s future avenues, spiking turnover rates can prove to be ghastly.
It is a fact that labour turnover directly impacts an organisation’s revenue stream and employee morale. So, the question is how to suppress the epidemic of labour turnover post-holiday season.
Retention and growing one’s team are crucial for a manager. The retention strategy has to be tactically sound and pinpoint what the organisation has in mind and the best way to do that is to keep the organisational goals in mind.
An organisation’s goals, targets and objectives are conveyed well before the holiday season and the management should be nifty in communicating them.
It is a basic management principle to inculcate an employee’s personal goals into the organisation’s goals. If it is done this way, then the management can wave the post-festive labour turnover goodbye. But if not, then the management should take heed of it.
Without a purpose, our lives would be shambolic. The same goes for an organisation and its employees, who shall be left high and dry in case they do not have a target to achieve.
Management should fabricate the organisation’s goals in a way that the people who make it happen do it to fulfil their personal aspirations.
From blossoming an employee’s skills to giving him/her a chance to develop in terms of hierarchical role in the organisation, it is the little corporate pleasures that keep him/her going. Even employees walking out the door can sway away from it when sufficiently convinced.
Employees have psychological needs of their own, and that thirst can be quenched by nothing but recognition. Recognition is crucial to develop a sense of belongingness in employees and it leads to profound efforts from their side to accomplish the given goals.
Management should always recognise the work that their employees did in the past one year and dwell on it. They must try to bring out the positives and assure that it can only get better.
Sometimes, a healthy dose of autonomy can do the trick as well, in terms of reward for the employee’s performance.
There is always scope for the management to re-craft employees’ job roles and present them with a new scope to learn more than what they know about a job.
This level of personal development really leaves employees intrigued if they are content with their new responsibilities.
Managing a group of high-flying individuals can turn out to be the most self-rewarding of tasks if correctly done. But in times of festivities that the New Year bestows upon us, many employees get set for their next expedition.
The post-holiday spike in labour turnover can very well be contained if the employees are retained the right way; engagement strategies are spread steadfastly; plan B stays in place; and leaders build a happy workforce.
We have all heard the old saying: “People don’t leave companies; they leave managers”. This does not necessarily mean that managers are doing things to actively drive away staff. Instead, it could mean they are not doing enough to keep them.
Managers are organisations’ bridge to their employees. They are responsible for guiding, handling and supervising their teams.
However, when the needs of their employees slip past their radar, it often opens up feelings of dissatisfaction and ingratitude.
Managers must understand and be aware of the mental states of their teams. An employee who feels supported and heard will be staying on the team for years to come. Welcome back from holidays!