Can Employee Engagement Survey Data be Used to Manage Staff Turnover?

We can’t be sure when but we can be sure that at some point in the not too distant future the British economy will start to emerge from its long hibernation. When it does it will be interesting to see what impact growth and renewed confidence have on the employment market.

It has been said many times that companies that have handled re-organisation and redundancies with sensitivity and focused on engaging their people are likely to retain  their key players. Those that have used the spectre of redundancy to justify ever increasing demands while giving less in return are likely to haemorrhage talent.

This raises the perennial question: how can companies, regardless of their people policies, best understand and manage staff turnover. In most cases the answer is either the exit interview or the leavers’ survey. Both have their value but both have limitations. It’s often said that some employees will be less than truthful in an exit interview, and to a lesser degree that’s also an issue with leavers’ surveys. On top of that, while both approaches might help us to understand why people leave they seldom tell us anything about the journey that led to that decision.

However, recent research suggests that there is an alternative to exit interviews and leavers’ surveys; one which does enable us to track that journey, profile leavers and predict staff turnover. At its heart is a detailed analysis of employee engagement survey data which enables us to a) identify the point at which the attitudes and behaviours of leavers begin to diverge from those of their colleagues and b) develop profiles for specific categories of leaver.

These insights do not necessarily help companies to deal with the immediate triggers behind the decision to leave but they do help them pinpoint the policies, practices and behaviours which lead to disaffection over time.

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For further reading download our latest research paper:
“Using Survey Data to Predict Staff Turnover”