Three ways your recruitment processes can prevent high staff turnover

You’ll know when you have a staff turnover problem. Poor reviews, poor service, overstressed employees, underperforming teams and skyrocketing recruitment costs – none of this is good for business. And for employers in service industries like retail, hospitality and leisure, which have traditionally high levels of staff turnover, it’s especially hard to hold on to good staff.

There are many reasons for high staff turnover: perhaps your organisational culture could be improved; maybe it’s your reward strategy or that your morale is low. But have you considered how your recruitment strategy might be contributing to high turnover, especially towards premature departure, where staff leave in the first few weeks of their job? Premature departure is especially difficult for the service industry, where an unplanned gap in staffing can lead to poor customer service, which can come back to bite you through negative online reviews.

At its heart, recruitment is the process of having the right person, in the right place, at the right time. Here are three ways your recruitment culture can reduce turnover levels.

Realistic job previews

Staff leave soon after starting their job because their role isn’t what they expect. Perhaps your recruitment team talk up the job; perhaps they make it appear more exciting and interesting than it really is. A Realistic Job Preview (RJP) is an ideal tool to manage expectations as it gives potential employees both positive and negative realistic information about the job, to enable them to make a more informed decision. A RJP reduces the chance of an expectation mismatch and also screens out people before they’ve even applied, reducing your recruitment costs. RJPs can be written or video format.

Being smart with volume recruitment

Industries that have a “season” e.g. Christmas for the retail sector, can rush to hire staff and can be faced with volume recruitment, which risks hiring staff that are wrong for the job and who leave quickly. Two ways to tackle this are through pre-interview online screening such as ability testing and through keeping in touch with good seasonal staff (for instance, students) during the down season, to keep them engaged and more likely to want to work with you again.

Make it meaningful

Many service industry jobs are low skilled and low paid, but you’ll know how vital these jobs are to keep your business running. It’s important that you authentically value the staff who perform these roles. Your recruitment process can play its part in increasing staff engagement, by making the job meaningful; showing how the role fits with the organisation and how important it is. If the rest of your organisational culture echoes this, you’re likely to find recruits far more engaged and less likely to leave.

Polina Montano is Cofounder and COO at JOB TODAY, the UK’s leading mobile recruitment platform. Job Today helps employers in the service industries find great staff quickly. Try our app now and source top candidates in minutes.