Hiring and firing is not the only thing a BPO company is responsible for when it comes to human resources management. There are many other important duties, one majorly being retaining good employees. As much as it is important to hire a good employee, it is just as important to keep them in the company for a long time.

When the employees in an organization are not satisfied, there is an increase in the number of turnover of a company. This, in turn, puts a negative light in the company’s image. Likewise, the turnover cost can also be very high for the company as they need to invest extra in finding and hiring new employees for the same job positions that were left by an older dissatisfied staff.

Employee retention is not rocket science if you have the right tools and metrics to measure their performance in the organization. This does not necessarily mean that the metrics will show you what’s on their mind. It does, however, mean that employees or the BPO company in charge of the HR duty will get an insight into whether the staff force is satisfied in the organization.

There are many employee retention metrics that can be used in order to track several aspects when it comes to workforce satisfaction, but below are the major 10 employee retention metrics. Make sure to read till the end to know more.

What do you mean by employee retention?

Employee retention refers to the capacity of an employer or an organization as a whole to keep an employee in their company for a long term. It is not always employers who are not satisfied with their employee’s work. In many situations, there are many employees who wish to leave their current job due to discontentment.

The whole motive of employee retention is to keep an employee motivated to work better in the workplace while also ensuring that they get the incentives as well as the right conditions to keep working for the company in the long term.

For many organizations, it is often easier to satisfy and impress an employee in the first few days. But with time, the employers tend to neglect their employee’s needs and motivation. This leads to a high turnover ratio. Employee retention is all about avoiding turnover ratio while keeping the employees interested and positive about the work they do.

10 employee retention metrics you need to track in BPO companies

With the help of these employee retention metrics, BPO companies can know better how to retain employees in an organization:

Employee retention rate: Employee retention rate shows the rate of employees that stay in an organization for a certain period. It is important for companies to track through this metric to know what goes wrong and what they are doing right. This metric helps find out what motivates the employees to stay in an organization or what leads them to leave it.

Turnover rate: The turnover rate shows the number of employees that have left their jobs within a certain period. This percentage helps the companies determine whether the employees are satisfied in the organization or not depending on the intensity of job exits.

Voluntary turnovers: Voluntary turnovers show the percentage of employees who leave the organization without the top management having to fire them. Voluntary turnovers can be both good and bad for a company. Functional turnovers mean that employees who drain the energy of every other employee in the organization while lagging behind in their own work leave the job. This can save costs for the organization. Likewise, dysfunctional turnover means that productive and profitable employees are leaving their jobs.

Involuntary turnover: Involuntary turnover takes place when an organization lays off an employee. This does not necessarily always show a fault in an employee’s performance, but the health, productivity, and effectiveness of the company.

Turnover costs: Hiring, training, and recruiting a new employee for the job position that had been left by a former employee is both time and cost consuming. And, the departure cost of an employee can also be quite as high at times. Hence, turnover cost measures the percentage of cost born by a company after an employee turnover.

Absence rate: The absence rate shows the percentage of days an employee did not show up for work. This may or may not show the fault of the employee. When an employee has a higher rate of absence, it usually means that he is not motivated to come to work due to dissatisfaction and lack of engagement. In order to preserve the wellbeing of employees, it is important to track their absence rates and help them balance their work and life accordingly.

Retention per manager: Retention per manager shows which managers are able to retain the employees and who are not able to keep employees in his team. This metric helps in training and guiding the manager to work better if his team has shown more turnover rate over time.

Average employee length: The number of years employees have worked in an organization can be easily determined with the help of average employee length. This metric shows if employees in the company have a record of staying for a long duration or quitting in shorter durations.

New employee satisfaction: When a new employee joins an organization, it is important to use the new employee satisfaction metric. This shows the company how happy and committed the employees are. Training, onboarding, salaries, and other benefits have a great role to play when it comes to determining new employee satisfaction rate.

Overall employee satisfaction: The overall employee satisfaction metric is more like a conclusion as to how happy the employees are in an organization or how big of a likelihood there is for them to leave the organization. Tracking overall employee satisfaction shows whether the employees are able to balance their work and life, the health of the rules and policies of a company, culture, and the work environment of the company.

What are the factors that affect employee retention?

There are always many reasons as to why employees leave or stay in an organization. Some of the major factors are given below:

Lack of work-life balance: Working for a company does not mean that employees have to make their work their life. Employees value a workplace that helps them balance both their work and life. When their life becomes all about their work, they lose motivation, and eventually leave their jobs.

Manager’s attitude: How a manager is around the employees makes a big difference when it comes to employee retention. A manager with a positive attitude is always able to keep employees in the organization for the long term. Positive words and motivational actions will generate a sense of ownership and responsibility for the company among the employees.

A negative manager, on the other hand, can push even the best and the most positive employee out of the organization. Lack of acknowledgment has always played a great part in high turnover rates in any organization.

Learning experience: Employees seek ways to grow themselves career wise. Money is not the only source of motivation for many. A lot of employees who join an organization tend to have expectations of growing with time in the organization. If their job is limiting their creativity and not giving them much to learn from, there is a great chance of them leaving the job.

 Vagueness in stated roles for a job position: When an employee applies for a certain job position, he expects to be working for that position only. Many companies tend to hire fewer employees and make the limited employees carry out different job roles. This creates a negative impact on the minds of the employees and forces them out of the company.

Monetary compensation: Employees want to be valued not only through words and actions but also through monetary compensation. Companies are competitive these days, and one company may be providing a higher salary for a job role that another company is paying lesser for. An employee who is skilled enough to change jobs will do it if he is not satisfied with the job he is carrying.

Conclusion

Employee retention is necessary for all organizations. Not only does it ensure that a company’s reputation is good outside of it, it also cuts a big amount of costs and time for those in higher positions. Metrics that measure employee retention helps identify the mistakes that the managers are making in the company. Depending on different types of metrics, one can come to different conclusions. For a company that wants to make improvements in the long run, the metrics help to form a benchmark which the managers can follow to make changes and improvements. BPOs can also observe what kind of actions in the company can make a positive impact in the long term.

Pareshor Kharel is a customer service enthusiast and the managing director at Kantipur Management Private Limited. He can be reached at paras@kantipurmanagement.com.np