Six Things You Can Do About Staff Turnover
Worried about staff turnover? You probably should be. The Great Resignation may be hitting the for-profit labor market hardest but nonprofits are feeling it, too. Here are six steps to minimize turnover and reduce its impact on your organization.
Minimize turnover. The secret to minimizing turnover is get out ahead of it. Once a staff person starts looking for another job, they’re likely to find one—and to take it. Minimizing turnover requires a concerted effort to build and maintain an outstanding work environment—and thus reduce the incentives of staff to start searching for something better.
1. Embrace your competitive advantages. When it comes to retaining staff, nonprofits have two powerful advantages over for-profits:
Meaningful work. Nonprofits allow staff to make a living while helping to make the world a better place. It’s easy to take this for granted since it’s so deeply entrenched in the nonprofit experience. But this is extraordinary.
Individual impact. Nonprofits aren’t just places to join with like-minded people to make a difference, they also afford opportunities for individual contributions far beyond what most for-profits can offer. Even junior staff can often take on far more responsibility—and have more impact—than would be possible in any other work environment.
Nonprofit leaders make the most of these advantages through regular internal communications that connect the daily work of staff with mission. The better able staff are to see the importance of their roles in overall organizational success, the more connected they will be to the organization—and less likely to look elsewhere.
2. Manage better. In this labor market, compliance and accountability based approaches to management are more likely to fall flat. Smart managers are paying more attention to what their team members want and using this to evoke from them the performance the nonprofit requires. Just a few examples. . .
Team members want to move their careers forward: Treat professional development as an integral element of doing one’s job. Provide growth opportunities and offer constructive guidance on a regular basis. Cultivate relationships in which team members know they have your support, even if their growth takes them beyond your team.
Staff want to work in a supportive environment: Develop and maintain an outstanding work culture. The pandemic demonstrated the enormous capacity of many nonprofits to adapt to the individual challenges faced by staff members. Don’t put that capacity back in its box.
Staff want to know more about the decisions that impact then: Tell them. Strengthen internal communication systems to limit gossip, encourage feedback and promote a sense that senior managers are moving the nonprofit forward, even when that can’t be entirely transparent.
3. Give people more money. This may not be quite as simple as it sounds, but it’s also really not that complicated. Most nonprofits live with the fear that future income won’t cover expenses, a fear all too often articulated as “we can’t afford it” when it comes to increasing compensation. But while the fear is reasonable, it must be balanced against the very real possibility that, without increases, staff will be more inclined to leave. If turnover is going to be minimized, the discussion cannot be whether to increase compensation, but rather by how much.
Adapt to turnover. Staff turnover is a problem because it undercuts a nonprofit’s ability to carry out its mission. Not only does a departing team member leave work undone, but the departure, transition and replacement are often enormously disruptive for everyone else, taxing emotionally and absorbing scarce energy and resources.
4. Systematize. The easier it is for new people to take on the responsibilities of departing staff, the less damaging turnover will be. Experienced staff can be effective with a minimum of structures and systems because they have learned the work, have developed the relationships, and are steeped in the organizational culture. But when they leave, that know-how is lost. Now is the time to refresh (or create) organizational structures and systems—check lists, protocol, document finders, and other documentation—that support common expectations of how things are done and what good performance looks like. This will enable new staff to start contributing quickly.
5. Normalize. Turnover is a big deal not only for the practical challenges it creates but because of what it means. When turnover is perceived as a repudiation of the organization and its management—that’s bad. But when it’s seen as a healthy expression of individual choice and professional growth—that’s OK. Normalizing turnover promotes the latter meaning. The more inclined remaining staff are to see turnover as normal, the more readily they can adjust to departures and be ready to welcome new staff.
To be effective, normalizing needs to be proactive and seeded into the organizational culture. Some features of a culture that normalizes turnover:
It’s OK to talk about. Candid discussions with team members about their longer term aspirations position you to support them when they’re ready to move on. But they also enable you to intervene when moving on may not be in their best interests.
No 401(k) vesting schedules. Nothing sends a message that you’re not supposed to leave better than holding onto someone’s money unless they stay. Worse, there’s no good reason to think that vesting schedules actually support retention.
Relationships with alumni are maintained, particularly those that continue to work in the field. People are valued for who they are, not just because they’re loyal members of the “family.”
Departures are occasions for celebration, kind words and gratitude, not marching folks out the proverbial back door.
6. Don’t take it personally. It can feel terrible when people leave—they’re abandoning the family that you’ve created, they’re ungrateful for the opportunities you’ve provided them and they’re putting their own selfish interests ahead of the mission. Departing staff aren’t just leaving a job, they’re rejecting you.
But it’s still worth taking it down a couple notches. Managing turnover is hard enough without layering on betrayal and hurt. Maintaining emotional distance can help you to see patterns and identify opportunities to improve retention. This distance can be particularly useful when your own conduct is part of the problem, allowing you both to see your own role and, ideally, make adjustments.
Staff turnover isn’t just the crisis of the day; it’s a persistent obstacle to the resiliency and effectiveness of our nonprofits. Building practices, cultures, and attitudes to mitigate and manage turnover have long term benefits for our nonprofits and those we serve.