We hand over this blog to Erik Green, MD, Green-Jakobsen – responsible for developing safety, leadership and human resource management on the cost of bad bosses.
95 percent of employees leaving their jobs do it because of ineffective managers. People don’t leave jobs, they leave bosses!
Many merchant marine officers may still leave shipping companies for reasons of money, but there is no doubt that it is extremely poor business not to have an implemented retention strategy or to understand that attrition control programs can help your company keep its best people.
Green-Jakobsen has been involved in the process of estimating recruitment costs in connection with a number of retention consultancy assignments. Money is more wisely spent on developing the bosses to become good leaders and role models.
The cost of poor retention
It is important to understand the costs of poor retention – this includes considerable recruitment costs covering a number of tasks ranging from defining the job description, advertising, interviews, communication with applicants till writing the contract – and many more. All this takes time and costs money.
Bosses need people skills
Looking at research and listening to those who perform exit interviews, it becomes very clear that managers and superiors are the most common cause of job attrition. In this respect our message is clear: develop or replace managers and superior officers who have poor social and interpersonal competencies. A good leader gets people to follow. So train them in competencies that include soft skills that enable them to handle interaction with employees and colleagues.
Develop a retention strategy
In order to reduce costs caused by poor retention the implementation of a Retention Strategy is vital and various actions can be taken. However, the need for managers and marine officers with appropriate personal and social competencies should still be the main focus. Some suggested actions are to:
- integrate the importance of social and personal competencies in company policy
- define the social and personal competencies roles and responsibilities of superior officers
- develop and implement a competence development plan related to personal and social competencies
- train and develop social and personal competencies
Find out more at www.green-jakobsen.com
