Employer Wants High Staff Turnover

LegacyUser

Our organisation, has been 'in transition' for years now. There have been the usual paycuts and longer hours and voluntary redundancies etc. Now things seem to be more under control but the atmosphere has gone from toxic to whatever you call worse-than-toxic in several areas.

Staff turnover has been pretty high, I don't have figures for every section but I know that in some areas it is over 50% or 60% in one year, and you're talking about areas with 40-50 or more people each. It used to be much lower. We used to bring new staff around and introduce them to everyone. Now people have stopped learning new staff's names.

We keep getting told that the organisation is 'in transition', but transition has been going on for 7-8 years now. I thought that high staff turnover was clearly a bad thing and that eventually something would be done about it. But now it looks like senior management actually want high staff turnover. They even cite studies and statistics that high 'churn' can be good for an organisation and make it more dynamic - what is the story with that?

I've decided to leave too as the atmosphere is often horrible and it just ruins your whole day but I can't understand wanting high staff turnover - what is that about?

Thanks.

screamer

High staff turnover is usually frowned upon OP. However, off the top of my head, the reasons I can think of for wanting high staff turnover are usually economic. Generally if the work is repetitive or something that a few weeks of training will start someone off (even shakily), then perhaps it's that high staff turnover ensures that the wage base stays low. I've seen a couple of organisations do horrible things to the workers all to dis-improve their work life balance so that they will leave. They are replaced then by min wage workers and have no redundancy to pay. Other reasons for not wanting to keep people on long term could be exactly what you reference, as sometimes people get stuck in a rut and turn toxic themselves which affects the other workers and productivity negatively. On the other side, new people in an organisation can bring a lot of good to the organisation with different ways to look at problems etc, that people who are there a few years may not see. Also, of course, they bring new skillsets with them too.
Depends on what way a company looks at things I guess.

Irish_Elect_Eng

Turnover is a very misunderstood part of the HR picture.

Turnover that is either too high or two low is bad.
Not all departures are bad for a company and not all retention are good for a company.

But the level of turnover you describe is far too high to have a high performance company. Your decision to leave such an environment is probably wise.

Not All Employee Turnover Is Bad — Celebrate “Losing The Losers”

George Michael

lidl has a high turnover

kravmaga

Anonymouswork wrote: »

Our organisation, has been 'in transition' for years now. There have been the usual paycuts and longer hours and voluntary redundancies etc. Now things seem to be more under control but the atmosphere has gone from toxic to whatever you call worse-than-toxic in several areas.

Staff turnover has been pretty high, I don't have figures for every section but I know that in some areas it is over 50% or 60% in one year, and you're talking about areas with 40-50 or more people each. It used to be much lower. We used to bring new staff around and introduce them to everyone. Now people have stopped learning new staff's names.

We keep getting told that the organisation is 'in transition', but transition has been going on for 7-8 years now. I thought that high staff turnover was clearly a bad thing and that eventually something would be done about it. But now it looks like senior management actually want high staff turnover. They even cite studies and statistics that high 'churn' can be good for an organisation and make it more dynamic - what is the story with that?

I've decided to leave too as the atmosphere is often horrible and it just ruins your whole day but I can't understand wanting high staff turnover - what is that about?

Thanks.

Sounds like your working for a US multinational?

Bobthefireman

It is as has been mentioned a way to keep wages low.

KlausFlouride

Anonymouswork wrote: »

I can't understand wanting high staff turnover - what is that about?

Thanks.

Unless the jobs are very low skill, the mgt team are a bunch of spoofers. Get out while you can.

Bobthefireman

KlausFlouride wrote: »

Unless the jobs are very low skill, the mgt team are a bunch of spoofers. Get out while you can.

Even if it's highly skilled, they hire graduates for 4 years, then the graduates have built up their experience and move on to highly paid jobs. They then hire new graduates again. They tend to retain at least one extremely experienced person in each division and just leave them to it. (This is my experience working in a US multinational engineering company).