by R Shimoda

Created on: May 06, 2008   Last Updated: September 01, 2010

Having worked for 10 different companies in the past 26 years ranging in size from 9 to 185,000 employees, I have a pretty good idea on what employers need to do to keep employee turnover low.

One employer (who shall remain nameless) was one of the worst employers I had ever seen and will be used to illustrate things employers want to avoid if they don't want high employee turnover rate. It was a small family owned business (fifteen people in total) that sold construction materials. The father was president and his wife and daughter handled accounts payable and receivable. The balance of the employees (non-family members)were the workers who went out on sales calls, placed orders with the manufacturers and did field service calls. Namely all the real work. There was no attempts made to retain employees because the president believed and would often say "workers are a dime-a-dozen and easy to find".

1) Lead by example - It was not unusual for the father and daughter to leave at any time of the day without explanation and no hints on when they would return. The same would happen for vacation. Sometimes the daughter would take off most of the day to attend singing lessons or craft classes. By comparison, the workers were regularly scolded for not working set hours 7 AM - 4 PM with a 1 hour lunch.

2) Compensate employees fairly - I remember two different years where the president told all us workers there would be no raises because business had been bad. Then a few hours later he proudly shows me a $400 digital watch with compass, altimeter, barometer, stopwatch, etc that his wife just gave him for Christmas. After another similar talk, he showed me a custom made bike that ran $3000 he bought as a gift to himself.

3) Take responsibility for your screw-ups - When I'd make an error on an order, it resulted in a long lecture of how the business isn't making money and I had to fix the problem. When he'd make an error, it was my job to fix it without comment.

4) Be truthful - Because the owner was concerned that the non-family members would protest being underpaid, no sales figures were ever released. The closest was the year the company progress was tracked by so many percent above or below the previous year's figures. One particularly despicable act was where myself and two other workers were approached by the owner on an unsolicited basis to see if we wanted to take over the company. Our response was affirmative but we wanted to have an accountant of our choosing to

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