Business Core · HR · Module
Retention and engagement
Keeping the capability the organisation has already paid to build, and understanding why people stay or leave before the pattern becomes a problem.
The idea
How it works
Turnover is expensive in ways that appear in several budgets and no report. Recruitment cost, lost productivity, the time of everyone involved in handover, and the capability that simply leaves.
The distinction worth holding is between satisfaction and engagement. Satisfaction predicts staying; engagement predicts discretionary effort. An organisation can have a great deal of the first and very little of the second.
Working with it
In practice
- 01
Separate regretted from unregretted departures
An overall turnover figure hides the only number that matters: how many people left whom the organisation wanted to keep.
- 02
Ask while people are still there
Exit interviews arrive after the decision. Asking earlier is the only version that can change anything.
- 03
Look for patterns by team and manager
Turnover almost never distributes evenly. The concentration is the finding.
- 04
Act on something
Surveys that produce no visible change reduce engagement, because they demonstrate that being asked means nothing.
One level in
The components of retention and engagement
A component is something that exists afterwards which did not exist before — a deliverable or a mechanism, not an intention.
The engagement read
What people say about discretionary effort, kept separate from satisfaction.
LearnThe exit findings
What leavers say, gathered and read for pattern rather than filed individually.
Learn
A survey that produces no visible action costs more engagement than not asking would have. Only run one you intend to act on.
The other modules in hr
Workforce planning
Working out what capability the organisation will need, when, and whether it currently has it. The gap between the two drives everything else in this object.
LearnRecruitment and selection
Finding candidates and choosing between them in a way that predicts performance rather than comfort.
LearnDevelopment
Building capability in people already present — usually cheaper than hiring it, always slower, and rarely planned as deliberately.
Learn