The Right Kind of Turnover

Turnover is bad. Right? It’s expensive for an organization. It’s bad for continuity. Having a reputation for high turnover can make it hard to hire the people you want. If you think of an organization with a high turnover rate, your first thought might be that something must be wrong with them.

Turnover itself isn’t a bad thing. There’s a good kind of turnover, and a not so good kind of turnover.

Bad turnover is when people on a team keep quitting because their manager treats them poorly, and no one does anything about it. Good turnover is when a manager who doesn’t want to change quits because the organization persistently holds them accountable to being a good leader.

Bad turnover is when employees leave suddenly and without warning because they don’t think you’re invested in their success, and a slightly better offer came along. Good turnover is when you’ve helped an employee grow their skills to the point that their next step is a job somewhere else. You’ve known all along what their goals were, and you knew they would eventually move on to something else. But you helped them get there anyway, and you celebrated their success on their way out.

Bad turnover is when people leave because of the obvious gap between what the organization says and what the organization does. You constantly tell employees that you have their best interests at heart and care about their success and well-being, and then make decisions that blatantly make their work life worse for the organization’s short-term gain. Good turnover is when you tell employees where you’re going and what you’re trying to do, and then ask them if they want to come with you. If they don’t, you genuinely and respectfully help them get into a situation that is better for their wants and needs.

When you have the wrong kind of turnover, it eventually becomes part of your culture. It turns into a perpetual feedback loop that gets you more of the same.

When you have the right kind of turnover, it also becomes part of your culture. It turns into a feedback loop that brings you more of what you need to be successful. When people leave who didn’t really want to participate in what you were trying to do, it might be difficult in the short term. But in the long run, it will allow you to get the right people who want to go with you where you’re going. When you give people generous opportunities to develop and get where they want to go, and then they leave, it’s not a short-term loss. It’s a long-term investment. The reputation you gain for actually caring about people will bring quality candidates to fill empty positions, and many of these talented people may eventually come back later with even more skills.

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