Ever throw a Turnover slide up in an Operations review and have to tread carefully about what you say? You know the drill, here are some common flavors that appear on the slide in that scenario:
–Customer Ops – has a Voluntary turnover problem the size of Nicarauga. You: “Customer Ops is working to research some of the drivers behind that trend.” Reality: The ankle cuffs attached to the cubes and the “only one person on the call center floor gets to go to the bathroom at once” policy isn’t encouraging retention.
–Marketing – Involuntary turnover runs at 4% in a department of 54 people. That’s 2 per year. Is that enough? There are some crappy performers in that group – Vickie won’t fire anyone.
You’ve got your problems, but hey – at least Vickie is firing a couple people per year – that’s more than the government you fund. More from Reason Magazine via FOT reader Joel K:
“Death — rather than poor performance, misconduct or layoffs — is the primary threat to job security at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Small Business Administration, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Office of Management and Budget and a dozen other federal operations.
The federal government fired 0.55% of its workers in the budget year that ended Sept. 30 — 11,668 employees in its 2.1 million workforce. Research shows that the private sector fires about 3% of workers annually for poor performance, says John Palguta, former research chief at the federal Merit Systems Protection Board, which handles federal firing disputes.”
And for those of you scoring at home, yes – that means that death is a more common reason for departure of a government worker than being fired. Of course, maybe that’s because the workforce of the government agencies is more effective than the one you support:
HUD spokesman Jerry Brown says his department’s low dismissal rate — providing a 99.85% job security rate for employees — shows a skilled and committed workforce. “We’ve never focused on firing people, and we don’t intend to start now. We’re more focused on hiring the right people,” he says.
San Francisco State University management professorJohn Sullivan, an expert on employee turnover, says the low departure rates show a failure to release poor performers and those with obsolete skills. “Rather than indicating something positive, rates below 1% in the firing and layoff components would indicate a serious management problem,” he says.”
Most of the organizations I’ve supported through the years would have somewhere between 3-6% involuntary turnover annually (folks asked to leave), and I’ll be damned if every time I reported on those numbers that I didn’t feel soft. Think about the 3% average number across the private sector. We’re saying that 3 of every 100 workers you have got asked to leave. Is that enough?
What’s the right percentage? I say double that – at least 6% – and you’re in the range where you can truly say that you’re managing performance in a hard core way. After all, GE used to say fire the bottom 10%. Being a little over half that amount, but not doing it via forced choice – and instead evaluating performance issues when and where they happen and on their own merit – seems like the right place to be.
Hit me with your percentage in the comments. Bonus points for crazy stories regarding your reporting of turnover statistics across your company!
The horrible and unfortunate truth about the Administrative positions at our Electrical Contracting firm…
in one year, for 3 overworked positions:
5 voluntary (160%)
3 involuntary (100%)
Total turnover for those 3 positions 260%!!! WTF
The up side is that from this massive problem the management decided add 2 more positions in order to help with retention. It has helped.
The down side the construction mentality of some of the managers/owners is tough to change (I’m working on it every day) and they still haven’t figured out how to treat Administrative employees.
*Read: skilled trades are still an old boys club and these guys don’t know how to talk to the admin staff who are predominately women.*
So not having a high turn over rate is now considered a bad thing? Perhaps people need to be aware of how important federal employment is to states such as Tennessee, Alabama (Huntsville Space agencies, Birmingham’s UAB, etc) and others – without federal help these states would sink without a trace and encounter even higher unemployment.
Really, workerdude? Your takeaway is that this is a criticism of “not having a high turnover rate”? There’s nothing in this post, the Reason post, or the USA Today article that says the Federal government should have a high turnover rate. The claim is that the turnover rate is so microscopically low that it may carry some of it’s own problems. Equating “too low” with “needs to be high” is a sophomoric mistake.
Second, a quick stop at the BLS website would reveal that Federal employment is 2% of total employment in TN and 3% of total employment in AL. So federal employment is hardly the backbone of these economies either.
Chris, I completely agree with you! Even if federal employment were a larger percentage of total employment for TN and AL (or any state for that matter), that doesn’t mean they have the right people in those jobs! We have a decent amount of federal employment in my state and as a former staffing vendor to the government, I can say with strong certainty that the federal government keeps way too many people that aren’t qualified for their job. Their lack of appropriate turnover and a strong Pay for Performance system is crippling!
Great post! Your points make a lot of sense. It seems the government has a lot of learning left to do.
@Chris and Kris, sorry for the digression. I agree that there are federal employees who are just coasting in their jobs, but the same could also be said in many high level positions at various private companies especially where there ol’ boy network is strong.
Just a couple of other points I wanted to state: while the raw percentages of federal employment might be lower than private employment in AL and TN, the economic impact of entities such as UAB and the Huntsville Space Agencies (and similarly in TN, the world class research labs of ORNL, and the UT system) is in the billions of dollars. They provide high paying jobs, and numerous research spin offs which, yes, translate into private employment after they leave the research incubators. They also attract highly talented foreign students, researchers and workers. It baffles me that the federal government has and wants to further cut funding for such important entities of states which are not automatically viewed as havens of intellectual innovation either inside or outside the US. We can’t just rely on football.