Focus groups are a wonderful resource for
obtaining additional information about the cause of specific retention issues
in your organization. They allow you to
gather feedback directly from those that may be affected by such issues and can
be very helpful in either identifying which issues should be researched further
or validating the issues identified by other data collection methods.
They also have an additional purpose that
is often overlooked by organizations, and that is to validate the solutions
that are chosen based upon the information that they provided.
Once all of the data is collected from the
focus groups, and the causes of turnover have been identified, organizations
set about developing appropriate solutions to address those causes. While selecting the right solution an
organization may consider long term vs. short-term costs, impact and time
needed to implement a solution and perhaps even a forecast of the expected ROI
of that solution. However once the
solution is chosen, a key final step prior to implementation is to present both
the combined data results and proposed solutions to the focus group for their
input. This last step ensures that the
solution matches the needs identified by the group, and that the needs
identified at the time of the focus group are still relevant by the time the
solution is developed.
