Solving Employee Turnover with
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MENTORSHIP By / Sheralyn Belyeu • Photos courtesy of International Training Institute
mployee turnover isn’t just an inconvenience. Turnover eats into profits by limiting productivity while pushing up hiring and retraining costs. At the 2024 Partners in Progress Conference, Administrator of the National Energy Management Institute (NEMI) Lisa Davis and Recruitment and Retention Specialist for the International Training Institute (ITI) Tammy Meyen invited attendees to try the return on investment calculator at togetherplatform.com for a quick estimate of what turnover costs them every year. Depending on company size and average pay per employee, the estimates were eyepopping, ranging from hundreds of thousands to tens of millions of dollars.
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As high as these numbers look, the ROI calculator understates the impact of turnover in today’s tight job market. “We are at 1% unemployment in BC, so we have a hard time filling spots,” says Jake Jordan, business organizer for Local 276 in British Columbia. Severe labor shortages force everyone to learn new skills. “People who were within two to five years of planned retirement pulled the plug early due to COVID-19, which left companies with employees filling spots before they had the usual experience or training,” says Tom Montgomery, owner and strategic executive with Hermanson Company. Montgomery is a past-trustee for Local 66, and past-president of SMACNA-