Beckway Insights: Retain Great Teams by Addressing Complex Structures

People are reevaluating their careers like never before and the resulting near-term damage to businesses worldwide is painful. Simplifying complex structures, such as organizational and compensation structures, are two areas companies can address now to minimize the impact of the turnover and maximize employee experience.

Cost of Turnover.
The US Department of Labor states that over the past 6-months an average of 2.8% of employees have quit their job each month, meaning effectively one-third of all employees will quit their jobs this year.

Rather than a blip, few experts expect ever returning to pre-pandemic retention levels and the cost has never been higher. There’s the immediate cost of vacancy, in that person’s contributions have ceased until the new person is hired and up-to-speed. Then there’s the cost of hiring – the recruiter’s cost as well as the effort of posting, screening, interviewing, and securing an acceptance. Those are the obvious costs. The hidden costs include the time it takes to train a new hire to full-productivity, adding the risk of a mis-hire and subsequent redo – or two – a position might be in-flux for a full year before settling in. While the direct cost can easily be over $100,000 per employee, the indirect cost of chronic turnover to morale and performance can be immeasurable.

Proactive Solutions.
At Beckway, we’re fortunate to have maintained an annual turnover rate below 7%, well below professional services industry norms. We’re proud of the statistic and attribute it largely to our selection process as well as our deep-seated. We’re also careful to maintain a clear and simple organizational structure and the right approach to compensation and performance incentives.

Organizational Structure.
Effective structure involves careful assessment of both current and intended future processes and activities, reporting and decision-making, and communications and working relationships. The right structure accelerates decision-making and execution and improves customer and employee experience. Beckway has developed a proprietary suite of tools focused on the efficiency and effectiveness of organizational structure design. We use those tools not only to help us internally, but also to help our clients optimize their businesses.

Compensation Structure.
We’re also happy to demonstrate our tools-suite focused on optimizing compensation. Always a hot topic; everyone wants more, yes, but perhaps more importantly everyone wants “fair.” No one wants to feel cheated or under-paid compared to their peer group. Considerations regarding compensation should include work descriptions, seniority, performance, and impact on enterprise value.

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We recognize solving issues associated with engagement and retention is a complicated endeavor, requiring a multifaceted approach considering culture, leadership, and workplace practices. Getting organizational and compensation structures right are important steps to reducing turnover and avoiding becoming a victim of the great resignation. For many companies, the time is now for a review and perhaps a refresh on both topics. Please reach out to Mike Bugaj (mbugaj@beckway.com) or Keith Swenson (kswenson@beckway.com) if you’d like an objective perspective on these important topics.