5 Hiring Mistakes Increasing Your Turnover

Economic impacts, seasonal hiring rhythms, and other factors can impact employment and turnover rates in dramatic fashion...but external issues may not be the only thing to impact turnover. If your company is experiencing high or frequent employee turnover rates, it may be time to look at your hiring process. These are 5 common mistakes that increase employee turnover.

1. Incomplete Understanding of Candidates

   About 75% of senior managers or hiring executives have admitted to making the wrong or poor hire decision, and this often leads to turnover. A bad hire doesn’t necessarily mean a bad employee: it could just mean the wrong person for a role, a role with inaccurate expectations for company structure, or a hire that wasn’t properly vetted in the interview and pre-employment process. 
   
   An incomplete picture of a candidate can lead to misfits in roles and responsibilities, resulting in turnover. This can be especially costly for higher level managerial hires, but thorough background checks that also verify resume claims like education level or prior employment history can help prevent this to ensure the right fit. Not knowing a candidate thoroughly is a common pitfall, so it’s important to dissect why you are being burned by bad hires. It may be possible to resolve the issue by simply adjusting your background check and employment process. 

2. Offering a Salary Outside Market Range

   Employees may be suitably qualified for a role, but does your salary offering match? You may have a great hiring process that brings in qualified candidates for the right positions, but if you underpay your people, it’s likely to create turnover. Both the market trends and ethics of a salary should be considered. If the salary is outside the range of other similar kinds of roles, employees may move on from your company to receive better compensation for the same job elsewhere. Alternatively, if your salary is within range for other similar types of jobs but fails to pay a fair and living wage for your region, this can also create turnover.

3. Hierarchical Hiring Process

   It’s possible that your employee turnover problem is upstream in your hiring process simply because it depends on the outdated idea that using a hiring manager is the best or only way to build a team. Research is clear that hierarchy in hiring is not as effective as peer hiring. Entrepreneur Chuck Blakeman offers a clear example of managerless hiring: “At Semco, a manufacturing company, with 3,000 people--there isn't a single manager in the whole place; all hiring is done by the 8-10 person team on which that new hire will work. How does it work to have peers do the hiring? Semco's employee turnover for the last 20+ years has consistently hovered in the incredibly low 1-2% range.” If using managers to fill and retain roles isn’t working for your company, consider shaking it up and building on the idea that you can trust your team to identify the excellence and talent they need to fill any gaps.

4. Demanding Too Much from A Role

   Turnover can happen when employees are overwhelmed or unsupported in their roles. For instance, it’s possible to demand too much experience from a role, when instead you should provide more training. To prevent this, try to empower your team, remain open to critical feedback about management and internal processes, and screen candidates thoroughly before hiring to understand clearly what kinds of experience, qualifications, licensures, and training they may have--or where they may need additional support to be successful once they’re hired for a role.

5. Lack of Transparency with Candidates

   Just as a business wants to ensure it hires candidates who are truthful about their experience and backgrounds, prospective employees similarly need a level of transparency in the hiring process. Companies that misrepresent themselves or the kinds of support they perceive they can offer an employee in a role may set a new hire up for failure--and themselves for turnover! It may be difficult to be honest about weaknesses or challenges in your company, but a candidate is vetting you as much as you are vetting them. Being transparent from the start helps to build the foundation for trust, fair mutual expectations, and a more long-term positive working environment for both parties.

eKnowID believes strongly in the power of hiring for success, and quality background checks remain an essential part of the process to build great company culture, transparency, and safety.