We’re celebrating small business this week at Active Screening. A hearty congratulations and thank you for all your hard work. We know the dedication and devotion you must have to make a small business succeed – kudos to you!
There are some big hurdles to overcome if you’re a small business. Alexandria outlined 5 of ‘em here. We’re gonna head straight to the heart of the matter today: staffing. There are so many potential staffing landmines you might step on, it’s hard to know how to navigate this minefield.
There are minimum wage issues:
The Business of the Minimum Wage
The Real Issues Behind the Minimum Wage Debate
There is the omnipresent “millenials” issue:
8 Millennials’ Traits You Should Know About Before You Hire Them (side note – you should check out more of Lydia Abbot’s posts on LinkedIn – she’s a talented blogger!)
Why You Should Be Hiring Millenials
The Downside of Hiring Generation Y
Then, there is turnover.
Understanding Employee Turnover
Problems of High Turnover Rates
Small business often falls victim to a rotating cast of characters coming through your doors, taking up precious training time, increasing the workload for your “HR department” (say ‘hi’ to your mom from us!), only to jump ship for the next offer a couple of months/years later or to get pink slipped for some fireable offense. This line from ‘Understanding Employee Turnover’ sums it up best: “Turnover is a silent but effective profit killer.”
The (liberal leaning) Center for American Progress reports that the average cost of replacing an employee who earns less than $50k per year is 20% of the person’s annual salary. Folks who earn less than $30k per year cost 16% to replace.
There is two types of costs associated with turnover – hard costs and soft costs. We’re going to extrapolate an explanation from Brand + People to explain the differences between hard and soft costs.
Hard costs are easily quantifiable:
- recruiting and hiring
- training and onboarding
- salary and compensation
- other lost costs associated with money spent on an employee who is hired and leaves or is fired
Soft costs are more difficult to tally:
- time spent by management trying to manage
- discipline and motivate an employee who is hired and subsequently leaves your organization
- the stress and headaches experienced by those who must manage the unsuccessful employee
- lost employee or team productivity due to conflicts or underperformance issues
- lost customer opportunities or sales due to the non-performance of the employee who is hired and subsequently leaves your organization.
For the whole blog post from Brand + People, click here.
If you’re still in doubt, take a turn with this turnover template provided by the Society for Human Resource Management and the U.S. Department of Labor. Fill in the blanks and see just how much your last employee who left cost you.
Here’s the thing, though. We can help.
Nearly every hiring site out there says that thorough background checks are essential to finding the right people for your small business. For a potential employee, a background check highlights red flags, confirms honesty, affirms drug testing among countless other things. For your small business, an outsourced background check to Active Screening ensures you are not only getting high-quality, trustworthy employees with impeccable track records at previous employers, but also a more cost-efficient hiring procedure than dealing with constant turnover. Your bottom line will actually be saved by partnering with Active Screening for your background check needs.
Ready to take the next step toward preventing turnover? Give us a call today! 1-800-319-5580.