When the National Transportation Safety Board analyzed major flight accidents it found that 73% of them occurred on the first day of a flight crew working together.
When a team has worked together for a long time, they operate more efficiently with less mistakes and better outcomes. They have routines long understood and optimized by everyone involved, with no surprises.
This is why I don’t like to lose people. I like people to stay for a long time. They get better and learn more, and work better with their teammates.
What is your average tenure? At my oldest company which I founded in 1987 with 250 employees, the average tenure is 6.7 years. There is high trust, high efficiency, and high quality.
Go ahead and measure yours. If it’s low, you might understand why people make mistakes, why they need lots of training and management, and why they don’t work as well together as you’d like.
Make a comment with the orange button!
The field I work in – I’m sure like others operating with similar fiscal and management challenges in today’s business environment – is experiencing substantial attrition-driven turnover on a recurring basis, which profoundly affects productivity, efficiency, and first-time quality.
As I’m sure others have experienced, it takes a lot of energy, creativity, and attention to sustain the deliverable of first-time quality when it’s routinely someone’s first time doing something…
Thanks for a thought provoking topic, Larry!
Teamwork. Thats the key. Teamwork makes the dream work. Pre covid I was averaging 8 years. After Covid 2 months to a year. I’m at wit’s end.
What a fun exercise this was! I proudly report 9.1 years is our average of full time staff. (53 Ft employees)
Thanks for reminding us all about the fundamentals of business through the lens of an employee.
“The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.”
I’m glad my internet quit sending your stuff to spam. I enjoy the column. Tenure of employment in my trade nationally is one year. My employee average tenure is 13.5 years. We are enormously effective and efficient compared to our competition. We are also very expensive as competent people will not long remain in the absence of compensation, which is how the competition handles their end of things. Customers once obtained usually remain active subsequently, but the trouble is persuading the naive to try it out/