Losing Ground Without Core Values

Earlier when we looked at how we can rally our team around our core values, I briefly mentioned a long-standing organization that once had world class talent leading each separate department but had experienced some significant turnover in critical roles. While some of this was due to planned retirements, the majority was not. The folks who didn’t retire either went to work for competitors or started businesses of their own, actively competing against their former employer.

While doing research for our Recruitment, Retention, & Culture course, designed to provide leaders with a guide for building a great team rather than something geared specifically at the Human Resources community, I found a statistic from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showing that the average voluntary turnover rate nationwide, across all industries, was just shy of twenty-five percent annually. (I referenced this earlier in detailing how impressive it was to see the company Craig & Kim bought have only five percent turnover after twenty-four months.) Through my three and a half decades in the workforce, I’ve seen the largest part of this voluntary turnover be from employees who have been with a company for less than five years; and much of that has been the folks with two years or less. There are numerous reasons for this, but nearly all tie back to them not being provided with a solid reason for sticking around. The culture wasn’t something they bought into. They hadn’t connected with the company’s core values…

In contrast, the company I alluded to earlier has experienced turnover in almost all of their critical roles in less than a decade - and some of those positions have been filled multiple times. While two of these were planned retirements, the rest were not. Of those who didn’t retire, at least six new small businesses exist within the area that serve the same customer base. On top of that, I’m aware of at least a dozen highly skilled and highly motivated employees who now get their W2 from a competitor. There were a few other retirements in the mix, but at least one of those was almost a decade early and largely because he no longer felt like he had something to strive for; what he valued and what the company he had served for so long valued were no longer aligned.

Interestingly enough, nothing in that organization changed overnight. If anything, change took far too long and rarely had the teeth to make a positive impact or be sustained over time. And since the company had developed a solid reputation (and balance sheet) over many decades leading up to this, the folks who had the final say on critical decisions seemed to be more tuned in with how great things had been than where they were at present. Next time, we’ll look at how quickly that slope became slippery.