Maybe you’ve seen our posts where we welcome new colleagues and celebrate the long service of existing staff members. Recognising and celebrating employee milestones is really important to us as a business, however for every milestone there’s a challenge in the HR world and reflecting on the less positive aspects is as important as celebrating the successes. For instance, during the course of the last year or so we have experienced issues with staff retention and we have said goodbye to a number of our key collaborators. My experience is that staff turnover is a taboo subject – often seen as a failure that is better kept secret, but if we don’t address the issue how can we as employers expect to change the trend? The direct costs of recruitment and turnover are high, the indirect costs such as the increased workload for others, the impact on staff morale, and company’s reputation can be just as high. So what has this experience taught us? • It’s been crucial to understand why our staff have left the business, to do this we introduced exit interviews into our offboarding process. • Exit Interviews are an important step to not only show that a company cares that it’s staff members are leaving but also gain a valuable insight into the real reasons behind a resignation – cutting through the gossip and hearsay. • Act on the feedback: it kind of goes without saying that asking for feedback from departing staff and then doing nothing with the information gleaned is a waste of everyone’s time. It’s important to analyse exit interview data, look at any emerging trends putting into place improvements that address the causes. What changes have we implementing to address the issue of staff turnover? • We’re actively working on a management system which will reduce the bureaucracy of our everyday activity, let our employees concentrate on the things that really matter and improve overall efficiency for our customers. • We began our collaboration with @ODM Consulting, introducing the @Thomas International Personality Profile Assessment as part of our recruitment and talent management processes – an instrument that gives us an insight into the behavioural factors of candidates which when compared with the needs of the role helps us to make the right recruitment decisions, and helps us to better plan onboarding for new employees and development activities for existing staff members. • A manager development programme including bitesize training sessions on topics such as defining expectations, leading by example, SMART objectives and performance and talent management, in order to develop the soft skills of our people managers. • The introduction of the @Stimulus Employee Assistance Programme, giving our employees 24/7 free, confidential, psychological support, social assistance and legal and financial consultancy. • The introduction of the @Udemy Business platform which thanks to a significant company investment gives all employees 24/7 access to thousands of free training content, allowing complete flexibility for professional and personal development. The job market and workforce aspirations are in constant evolution, and employee engagement and retention activity needs to keep pace if a business wants to succeed. Some resignations we are unable to influence – life happens, others however we absolutely can work to avoid! h ’ k h my objective since becoming HR Manager of Nazari Automazioni is to support the sustainable growth of the business, it’s managers and employees. h m m ’ k k h pp m employees, @Cristian Armeli (IT Manager), @Alessandra Bosio and @Silvia Bertinetto (HW & Mech. Developers) and @Massimo Petiti (Mechanical Project Manager)