How Employee Burnout Contributes to Churn (Turnover)

You must make difficult decisions in any walk of life, especially in running a business. The most critical decisions will focus on policies that help you keep employees and ensure they are motivated. Today, we want to discuss some of the problems associated with employee churn, or turnover, and what you can do to combat it in today’s modern business environment.

What is Employee Churn?

Employee churn, or turnover, is the rate at which your employees leave for other ventures versus how long it takes to replace them. More often than not, you’ll see it represented as a percentage calculated over a specific period of time. For example, in 2023, the average churn rate for a business was about 18 percent. This means that nearly one out of every five positions will need to be refilled over the course of the calendar year. You don’t need us to tell you that this is a bad thing for organizations, especially considering how much it costs to conduct job searches—and that’s not even mentioning the loss of in-house knowledge and expertise or the disruptions to operations.

You can avoid a high churn rate by following these practices:

• Create a positive company culture
• Make compensation commensurate with responsibilities
• Create workplace flexibility
• Promote employee engagement through feedback
• Improve your diversity and inclusion

What is Employee Burnout?

Employee burnout is common and shows up in your team as chronic physical or emotional exhaustion. These same employees might also feel cynical or detached from their work. This level of prolonged stress can directly negatively influence an employee’s health, productivity, and job satisfaction. The causes of burnout include (but are not limited to) a workload that is too heavy, lack of autonomy, poor rewards, lacking compensation, recognition of effort, and conflicts between your organization's values and an employee’s.

Burnout is something that you must do all you can to prevent. Here are some strategies to try:

• Promote work/life balance
• Keep on top of workloads and scheduling
• Encourage the use of vacation time 
• Provide outlets to promote mental health
• Take an active interest in your workforce’s career development

These are two very different concepts, but they are connected in the most sinister way. Burnout can very well lead to churn if it’s not addressed well ahead of time.

Technology can help your business ensure that its employees stay satisfied in at least one way: not working harder than needed to perform their duties. To learn more, call us today at (415) 246-0101.