Managing Talent Retention

Focus Groups - The Often Overlooked Final Step

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.

Participant Selection - a Crucial First Step to Collecting Relevant Retention Data

The first step to ensuring your retention data collection techniques will result in useful information is to identify, select, and invite the appropriate individuals to participate.  Whether you are using questionnaires, retention surveys, interviews or focus groups to collect this information, if you don’t include the appropriate participants the information you receive may not provide you with a clear picture of the retention issues your company faces.  Including the right participants means that the information you obtain will be useful and relevant to your company’s specific retention issues.

To begin, identify and select individuals to participate who best reflect the group of individuals for whom a problem exists, and a solution needs to be created.  For example, if the identified problem is that technology employees leave the organization prior to their second-year anniversary, then technology employees who are soon to meet their second-year anniversary should be represented in the chosen data collection technique.  In another example, if the identified problem is that individual contributors recently promoted to management positions are leaving the company, then all recently promoted new managers should be represented in the data collection technique. 

Include at least 10 percent of the total researched population in the technique.  For example, if there are 1,000 employees who represent the target audience and you are conducting a focus group, plan to include 100 individuals in the focus groups. Invite 10-15 participants to ensure attendance of 6-12 participants of each focus group, the ideal focus group size.  For techniques that are easier to administer such as questionnaires and retention surveys, a larger percentage of the researched population can be included for even more accurate results. 

Nominal Group Technique - Combining Data from Multiple Focus Groups

A third format for conducting focus groups is the nominal group technique.  This approach allows unbiased input to be collected efficiently and accurately, and input is solicited from participants in a carefully structured format. 

This approach begins with a specific retention issue being presented to the group, for example, “Today, we’d like to hear from you – why you believe top sales performers, those consistently within the top 10% on closed sales, are leaving the company at a higher rate than the rest of the sales department.”  Participants in the focus group then make a list of the specific reasons they believe this is happening and then share their lists with the group in a round robin format while all of the ideas are recorded and posted around the room. 

Next the lists are consolidated and integrated and the participants are asked to identify which ten items they consider to be the most important causes of the retention issue, in order of importance.  After the lists are completed each participant reveals his or her number one item, and ten points are recorded next to that item on the list for each person that has selected it as number one.  Next, the number two reason is identified, and nine points are allotted for each person that selected that item as the number two reason.  This continues as each participant reveals their entire top ten list and points are assigned to each cause based upon the rankings the receive. 

Finally, all of the numbers next to each item are totaled and the item with the most points becomes the number one cause of the retention issue.  Generally the top 15 causes are captured and reported as the weighted average cause of the retention issue from that group. 

One of the major advantages of using the Nominal Group Technique is that it allows you to combine information from numerous focus groups to obtain an overall list of the top reasons for the identified retention issue.  Simply combine the final scores for each item identified by the individual focus groups to create a list of the top 15 issues affecting your retention of top talent.

Obtaining Valuable Retention Data - The Ishikawa Diagram

Previously I’ve discussed the basics of conducting an interview focus group to gather information about retention and issues that may be affecting retention within your company.  While this method provides a lot of great input from participants, it can leave the company with a large list of ideas and possible issues to pursue, and can make it difficult to determine which issues are the most important and should take precedence. 

If obtaining a census from your focus group participants is your goal, you may want to consider using an Ishikawa diagram to brainstorm ideas related to the root cause of a problem.  After all ideas about the root causes have been identified, the group narrows the list of causes down to a few through voting.  The Ishikawa diagram, also known a fishbone diagram was named after Kaoru Ishikawa, who used the diagram to help teams identify cause and effect. 

Conducting a focus group using this process begins by carefully articulating the problem that needs to be solved.  After that participants brainstorm as many ideas as possible, categorizing them into specific “cause categories” that affect the specific retention issue, such as People, Materials, Environment, etc.  After all ideas are exhausted the group then votes on the causes they believe are most instrumental to resolving the identified problem, and thus, the top priorities are identified, leaving the company with a specific list of solutions to consider. 

Obtaining Valuable Retention Data - The Group Interview

There are several strategies that companies can use to obtain information about what is causing employees to leave the company.  Of these strategies focus groups are a great way for companies to solicit qualitative data on a specific topic or area of concern, and allow the facilitator to probe for more detail then what can be provided through a questionnaire. 

While there are several different ways to conduct a focus group, one of the methods used most often is a carefully crafted set of interview questions to ask the group.  Group interviews are a great method for gathering 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. 

In Social Research Methods: Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches, Lawrence Newman identifies varies categories of questions that can be include in this type of focus group:

• Behavior-based questions that uncover the current behaviors of an individual
• Attitudes, Opinions, and Beliefs questions that reveal what someone thinks about a particular topic.
• Personal Characteristics that help to identify a particular group and potentially segment their responses.
• Participant Expections.
• Self-classification or Self-perceptions that participants have about themselves.
• Knowledge that participants currently posses or are lacking. 

Identify the series of questions to ask the focus groups and organize these into an Interview Guide, with specific questions grouped around common themes and ideas so that topics are not scattered and unfocused.  Ideally, broader conceptual questions, such as questions about specific behaviors, habits, and beliefs, should be asked at the start of the group interview, followed by more specific questions about challenges faced in the participant’s current role. Questions to get input on possible solutions should be asked at the end of the focus group. 

Turnover Costs Company 11% of Gross Profits

Ruche Media Company (RMC)* is a global media company with 24 offices located around the world.  The corporate headquarters of this $260M organization is based in a major metropolitan city in North America. Most of the 1,100 employees are based at the corporate headquarters while the remaining workforce is located in sales offices located in major metropolitan cities throughout the world.

 

After reviewing where turnover was the greatest, RMC then calculated the turnover costs. It was agreed that turnover rates, as defined by Dr. Jack J. Phillips, would be utilized to calculate turnover costs. The table below contains a list of turnover cost ranges as a percent of annual wage or salary as captured from dozens of impact studies. The data are arranged by job category, ranging from non-skilled, entry-level positions to middle managers. The ranges listed represent the cost of turnover as a percent of annual wage/salary and are rounded off for ease of use and communication. The costs represented in these studies are fully loaded and include the exit cost of the previous employee, recruiting, selection, orientation, initial training, wages and salaries while in training, lost productivity, quality problems, customer dissatisfaction, loss of expertise/knowledge, supervisor’s time for turnover and temporary replacement costs. The data in this table reflects studies in industry and trade magazines as well as practitioner publications, academic research and independent studies conducted by professional organizations and associations.

 

In order to obtain an average cost of turnover that could be used per turnover, RMC calculated the cost of turnover for each individual who left the organization during a 12-month period by multiplying that individual’s wage/salary by the median percent of annual wage/salary for the job category appropriate for that individual. The cost of each turnover during that period was then totaled and divided by the total number of individuals during that period to arrive at an average turnover cost of $116,927.09 per employee. Using this average cost of turnover, the total cost of turnover company-wide was calculated at $28.3M; almost 11% of annual sales! 

 

*Company name has been changed

Why Overall Company Turnover Isn't That Important

Overall company turnover is the number that most often appears on company’s dashboards or metric sheets, however this measurement rarely tells the whole story and can be the first misstep in leading a company to incorrectly identify the true causes of turnover within their organization.  To create a true picture of their situation, organizations must track retention and turnover data of all talent. Data should be tracked not only at the organizational level (e.g., location, department, etc.) but also at the individual level (e.g., age, race, etc.).

 

The following is a summary of how one company used this additional level of analysis to identify a specific area of concern in regards to their retention of newly hired employees:  

Ruche Media Company (RMC) is a global media company with 24 offices located around the world.  They monitored turnover by various categories and defined them as either voluntary or involuntary separations. Voluntary separations included: career, dissatisfaction with pay/benefits/policies, dissatisfaction with working conditions and personal reasons.

Involuntary separations included reduction in workforce, disciplinary action and termination for failure to meet performance expectations. No one terminated their employment as a result of a disability or because they retired during the period reviewed, so these categories were not considered in the analysis.

 

After creating a common definition of turnover, RMC analyzed the turnover rates by various demographics such as location, business group and years of service. Through this analysis, it was discovered that turnover was highest among employees who were employed for less than one year at RMC in the corporate office. In fact, RMC discovered that turnover in the corporate office was 30%; and, 12% of all new-hires departed prior to their one-year anniversary.

By using the additional level of data collection to determine that a large portion of the problem was centralized in one location this company was able to save time and money by implementing a program to address this specific area.