Freedom of Employment

There are some websites that claim that employee turnover costs 150% of that employee’s annual salary. When you add up the costs of the separation of the old employee, the job vacancy, the search and interview effort, the training costs of the rookie employee, the lost productivity, the loss of expertise; it all adds up to roughly 150% of the annual salary. When I hire a new employee to work in the office I expect that they are going to stay for a few years. I’d like to think that they will stay long enough that they become a fully functioning member of the office team and that the organization gets some productive years for the salary.

I am certainly motivated to try to meet an employee’s wants and needs as best I can to hold down turnover, but more importantly, it is the right thing to do as a human being who is trying to do right for others. Regardless of what I may do to retain staff members, employees have free will and are going to change jobs from time to time. I have no right to expect lifetime employment from anyone.

I wrote the following paragraph for my annual report to the organization where I work. I think it does a nice job of conveying my opinion.

When employees choose employment here, or leave for employment elsewhere, we celebrate these staff opportunities. Though we try to look out for the best interests of each employee, the employee is the better judge of what is best for them. The employee might have been looking for better pay, hours, duties, working conditions, or some other benefit. So when voluntary staff turnover occurs, we celebrate the occasion because it indicates that staff member has found a better job fit according to their wants and needs. If we truly want to make the world a better place, we are pleased to do it one employee at a time; be it in their coming, or in their going.