Data Watch

Popular Approaches to Combat Turnover of Front-line Employees

Almost four out of 10 employers report an increase in the turnover of front-line employees in the past six months, finds a survey from Boston-based ClearRock. The resulting situation can be time-consuming. Employers need to reduce the cost of turnover of current workers, particularly those who work on the front lines. With unemployment rising and concerns about a possible recession growing, it is becoming a higher priority for employers to control costs, according to ClearRock, which conducted the survey of 94 organizations nationwide.

The most popular way to reduce this turnover among front-line employees is to screen them more carefully before they are hired; it is an approach that 69% of respondents to ClearRock's survey indicate they use. The approach is in line with research from Texas A&M University's Mays Business School to be published in an upcoming issue of Personnel Psychology. It is important to focus on hiring the right people from the start—people who are less likely to quit—according to a meta-analytic study on turnover and its relationship to individuals’ personalities by Ryan Zimmerman, industrial-organizational psychologist at Mays Business School.

"There is proven research that shows certain people are more likely to be habitual quitters, where others will tend to stay at a job no matter what,” says Zimmerman, whose research focuses on employees' key characteristics, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and emotional stability—which, his research shows, best predict future turnover decisions.

Giving better orientation to front-line employees is the next most-popular method for retaining front-line employees among respondents (57%) to ClearRock's survey. Exit interviews with departing employees are the third most-popular (56% of survey respondents).

Far down the list of approaches among participants in ClearRock's survey is giving better pay and benefits to employees. Selected by 44% of survey respondents, that option finishes as the fifth most-popular way to reduce turnover of front-line employees.