Just Another Day

Something was wrong and Simon Roberts knew it. Meandering slowly through traffic on another cloudy morning, he started wondering where his life was going, and his thoughts quickly wandered to his job. It seemed so transactional now, and that left him feeling flat and unmotivated. Simon wasn't a lazy person; he loved a good challenge. But lately he'd found himself disengaging from his work, and that bothered him. Something needed to change—he just wasn't sure what it was, or where to start.

He had joined Admiral Janitorial Services four years earlier because solving problems and working with people were the two things Simon was passionate about.

His business card read "General Manager," but as Simon reflected on the past four years, it seemed he had spent most of his time dealing with recruiting issues. "Lead Recruiter" seemed more accurate since, truth be told, 75 percent of his time was spent dealing with issues directly related to the "T" word.

"Turnover," that is. But at Admiral, you didn't speak that word.

Sure, plenty of companies have turnover problems nowadays, and building a team has perhaps never been more difficult. But if you think your company has a turnover problem, try getting people to clean toilets. That's what Simon had spent most of his time working on over the past four years. Admiral Janitorial Services had just over four hundred employees and an annual turnover rate of 400 percent, just above the industry average. Needless to say, team spirit and employee morale were low.

Pulling into his parking space at Admiral's headquarters, Simon felt his energy plummet and wondered how he would face another day. All he could hear was a Winnie-the-Pooh tape his son used to listen to as a child playing over and over in his mind, and it was stuck on the line, "If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten."

"It's costing me a fortune," Greg said as he charged through the door. He never had learned to knock, but then again, he owns the company.

Greg founded Admiral when he was just seventeen and, over the past twenty-five years, he has grown the business from a one-man operation to a small army of around four hundred employees.

Today, he is a successful and wealthy businessman, but whenever people ask him what he does, he always replies, "I'm a janitor." From time to time, he will attend a black-tie affair and people will laugh at his answer, thinking he is joking. But discovering he is serious, their laughter quickly diminishes into embarrassment.

Greg is an entrepreneur—he can sell anything to anyone and has an uncanny ability to see trends and opportunities long before anybody else. But he can also be a little scattered and a bit of a hothead, and that's why Simon was hired as general manager four years ago.

"What's costing you a fortune?" Simon volleyed, though he knew exactly what Greg was talking about.

"Turnover!" Greg said, visibly exasperated.

On Friday afternoon, Simon had left the month-end reports on Greg's desk. Among those reports were the quarterly turnover numbers. Over the last three months, Admiral's turnover had been 107 percent. That's right. In the past ninety days, 428 employees had left Admiral.

"It's hard to know how much this is costing us," Simon said. "We are having to hire for some positions three times a quarter. And it's not just recruitment costs. Turnover affects morale, efficiency, and customer relationships. I've been telling you for twelve months that it's a big problem."

Greg nodded. "I know, I know. It's just that now we're starting to lose clients over it. I had a call from Charlie down at P & G today, telling me we're getting a warning letter putting us on a ninety-day probationary period. He says our work has been sloppy and they've noticed a constant flow of new faces, and they feel like things are falling between the cracks."

Simon just sat there, staring at Greg in a bit of a daze.

Greg continued, "So you've got my attention. Give them a pay raise, won't that make them stay?"

"I wish it would, but I'm not sure," Simon replied. "I don't want to just throw money at the problem. Let's find out what's causing the turnover. Let's find out why they're leaving."

"How will we find that out?" Greg asked.

Copyright © 2007 Beacon Publishing.