The revelations come from a new report from Australian business advisory and coaching company Abundance Global.
The impact of such high staff turnover is costing small businesses thousands of dollars in training and affecting workplace culture that is crucial to the success of a small business, said Abundance Global founder and former commander in the Australian Navy, David Dugan.
“If businesses want to succeed in this new environment, they need to dedicate as much effort and budget to recruitment as they do marketing and leads,” he said.
“Overlooking recruitment is one of Aussie [businesses’] biggest downfalls.”
According to Abundance Global, in workplaces across Australia, people are applying for a job, going through the recruitment process, receiving an offer, and then leveraging with another offer to receive extra monetary incentives, usually between $15,000 and $30,000.
“Now that employees are, on average, only staying for six to 18 months, businesses must go through the recruitment process again, consistently losing money, time and resources. Plus it negatively impacts the business’ growth rate,” said Mr Dugan.
“The recruitment and onboarding process is vital to retaining employees and creating a positive and productive workplace.
“Businesses need to communicate their vision, mission and values at the interview stage to ensure that recruitments explicitly align with the company.”
He said business owners were already fatigued after three years of disruption due to the global pandemic and trying to retain staff is adding to their concerns.
“They are finding it increasingly difficult to maintain their own mental health and that of their team,” said Mr Dugan.
“People were doing reasonably well in 2020 and 2021, then mindset caught up. The vast majority of business owners are still struggling to have the bandwidth to make good decisions. And of course, the first thing to be affected as a result was workplace culture.”
Businesses need to make sure they are hiring staff that fit in with their own workplace culture, said Mr Dugan.
“There has never been a more important time in business to be clear on your cultural values, communicating them initially in the interview and then throughout the employee’s time with the company,” he said.
“If an employee feels they align closely with the company, they will be more enticed to continue and be more productive. Therefore, it’s all about hiring the right people.”
Mr Dugan said a lot of businesses were losing employees because the business leaders were not as hands-on once the staff have been recruited.
“Organisations need to ensure that their management continues to mentor employees after hiring them to ensure that all employees are aware of the common goal the business is working towards,” he said.
