Struggling with High Employee Turnover? Seeking Advice on Improving Communication in HR

Dear Seniors,

I am working as an HR Manager for a garment manufacturing company with a workforce of about 2200 employees. Approximately 2000 employees join my company each year, and we lose the same number of assets annually.

I understand that employee communication is a major area where we are lacking, resulting in a high attrition rate. Formal meetings are rare (always during work hours, which is egregious!) and this is an area I would like to focus on.

I am seeking expert opinions on this issue and some guidelines to assist in making improvements.

Thank you.

Dear Sachin Aswathy,

My workforce is not educated and basically comprises sewing machine operators. I do not understand what difference it will make if I improve their corporate communication skills.

Dear Mr. Ramesan,

Firstly, please let me know where your company is located and what language is normally spoken there. You understand the importance of handling these shop floor employees properly, treating them with royal respect so they feel valued and appreciated.

We can assist by providing training in the local language to help them understand the significance of effective communication.

Looking forward to your response. Please email me at sachina@sarabeattie.com.

Regards,
Sachin Awasthy

Hi Ramesan,

For this kind of high attrition, communication is not the only area to be focused upon. You may want to take into consideration other aspects like employee connect, employee engagement activities, and their learning and development apart from their regular work. It is important to have some ice-breaker kind of activities to keep them motivated and enthusiastic despite having hectic work pressure.

You can reach me at darshita_pandya@infosys.com.

Dear Ramesh,

Do you feel communication is the main cause of the high level of attrition? I think there must be much more. Some possible causes are bad working conditions, low wages, insecurity, other industries offering better pay/conditions, and the attitude of the employers, etc. Communication may be a symptom rather than a cause.

So, unless you analyze the problem and provide detailed feedback to the bosses who act on your recommendations, things really won't change. Regarding communication, you could start by distributing a questionnaire to the staff/workers to get their views on what needs to be done. It has to be smartly done and should lead to a participative discussion. Your bosses and owners should give you a free hand, as attrition leads to direct/indirect costs. In a competitive market, this is not helpful.

So please delve deeper into the issue to get to the root cause.

Regards,
H. Prasad
Senior Trainer & Consultant

Dear Seniors,

I am from Tirupur, and my people speak Tamil. Due to labor scarcity, we recruit people from Arunachal Pradesh, West Bengal, Orissa, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, etc. Factories in my cluster all face the same problem, and even their attrition figures are much worse than mine. A lot of research and studies are being conducted, and based on the findings, many measures are being undertaken. My monthly attrition rate is somewhere between 4 to 6% (100 employees per month), and it increases when the factory closes during Deepavali holidays.

Workers from different areas (migrated) leave the factory when they have any problems in their native place or if they get good rain in their farm area. My point is that with structured employee communication, we can at least help them make decisions in a better manner. If they want to leave our company, let them leave, but in a planned way so that the organization will not suffer.

I hope the picture is clear now.