Losing staff can cause a variety of issues that cost the lab time, effort, and money. While some turnover can be positive, like retirements, people being promoted to new opportunities in the organization, or the exit of a toxic personality, too much turnover, especially of effective contributors, causes problems that require unexpected expenditure of time and budget. These costs justify investment in people to help build employee engagement, morale, and motivation. This investment tends to reduce turnover and increase staff retention.
Opportunity costs
As soon as an effective teammate leaves, the lab faces new costs. The most important is the opportunity cost of the open position. This is the work and associated revenue that the lab doesn’t get because the person is no longer there. The burdens of the absence will fall to other members of the team. This requires new priority decisions to account for the loss of the person’s skills and knowledge. It also creates a distraction that reduces the focus of the remaining team on completing their work.
Recruiting and hiring costs
The lab will need to begin a recruiting process that requires time and input from a variety of people and potentially costs money. The greater the need to replace the individual, the greater the costs. These will include the time of senior lab leaders in preparing job descriptions, reviewing resumes, interviewing candidates, making decisions, and preparing for onboarding. There may be external costs to hiring personnel agencies or recruiters to find specialized skills.
Training costs
The training costs are typically the highest costs associated with staff turnover. All the training and coaching invested in the person who left are lost, and the process must start over from scratch, involving a wide range of training on safety, quality, ethics, internal lab work processes, and technical topics. Not only does this training require the time of the new hire, but also the time and attention of the trainers. The training starts on day one with the start of onboarding, and for most labs, it will last at least one month before the new team member delivers anything technical. Depending on the lab and the role, it may take three to six months of further refinement between “trained” and “fully effective” where they deliver the complete results needed from their role.
Knowledge retention costs
An often-underestimated cost of turnover is the problems with retaining institutional knowledge. The lab loses everything the person knew and was working on. It requires a conscientious effort for the remaining team to fill in the gaps of their own knowledge to build a complete picture. The impact grows with seniority and can be especially damaging when a lab manager or other senior leader leaves unexpectedly.
Metrics
One thing that can help lab managers advocate for the resources they need to prevent and address turnover is data. Develop metrics that track information associated with staff replacement. This can include factors like time required to recruit candidates, interview, and make offers. Different metrics can track both the learner and the trainer's time committed to training. It is also important to track the time and investments made to retain staff. This will include things like training budgets, completed training, mentoring, and coaching.
Actions to reduce turnover costs
The most important things a lab manager can do to improve retention are to build strong, positive, trusting, and caring relationships in the lab. Enhance engagement by training supervisors, building effective objectives, regularly praising and recognizing staff, providing effective feedback, using staff strengths, and providing ongoing training. You can also build motivation by providing opportunities for autonomy, skill building, providing a clear purpose for the work, and helping people feel the progress they make.
Staff retention isn’t HR’s or line management’s problem. It is a problem for the lab and the lab manager. Helping people feel valued, cared about, and safe is a critical aspect of wanting to continue working in your lab. Invest the time to build relationships with staff and provide them with the things they need to be engaged in the work. Track your efforts to develop the staff and use that data to advocate for resources like a training budget to increase retention and avoid unnecessary turnover costs.
