Employing staff is always a challenge – are we going to get the right person, will the culture fit be right and will they be productive? I recently read that if you need to replace an employee it can cost you between 16 and 213% of the annual salary of that employee. With statistics like this I cannot believe that companies do not tailor make their employee screening policy to ensure that they get the right person the first time.
I have often been asked the question how on earth could this happen but when you sit down and analyse the whole thing you need to consider the costs of exit interviews, benefit pay out, recruitments costs, the cost of other staff having to go beyond the call of duty, training of new employees, lack of experience in the position, possible staff conflict and the lack of productivity of the new person.
With these figures in mind I cannot help but ask why companies do not look after their existing staff. I think in South Africa it is very different to some of the international markets where unemployment is not so high and employees can generally move from job to job but even if we have employees who will hang to their jobs we need to realize that 51% of employees are looking to change their job for various reasons.
At iFacts we try and do small things to make our staff happy – we provide fresh fruit on a weekly basis, we have purified cold water available, we do regular team building activities and just generally try and create a spirit of caring in the work place.
Mistakes do happen but we need to learn from them and try and prevent us making the same mistake time and time again.