I'm a plant manager at a small chemical plant with about 50 employees. We have a goal that comes from corporate to keep turnover below 15%. I feel like that is kind of high, and I wish we made a bigger effort to retain people. I've worked in other plants that seemed to have much lower turnover but wasn't in a management role and I don't know what the numbers were.

What's the typical turnover in your company or your industry? I just lost employee #9 - on pace for 27% turnover this year.

Just a sample point. Our goal is 11% and we are at 14% for the trailing 12 months. A&E firm. ~1500 employees.

That's nothing compared to Sanderson Farms and Pilgrim's Pride. Their turnover is at like 60%/month. It was insane working for those companies

Heavy steel fabrication/welding here, we're at about 24% trailing 6 months

Do you know the reasons for people leaving? If you think improving benefits might help I know someone that can help do that evaluation. If it's management or something else you probably need to pinpoint the reason.

71 jock said:

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Do you know the reasons for people leaving? If you think improving benefits might help I know someone that can help do that evaluation. If it's management or something else you probably need to pinpoint the reason.

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My plant has about 1,000 hourly. Core turnover is 20%, tenp turnover is around 300%.

Much of our turnover is b/c they point out and get fired. They only work when they want to and not much you can do besides throw money at it, but it doesn't help much.

Hey OP, I work at larger oil refinery and we're having a higher than normal turnover rate, due to people knowing who I am on here I won't really delve into it. Granted my views are from an operations side, nothing in management, but we are where the rubber meets the road. Anyways, in spite of terrific pay and benefits were losing people with more on the way out this year. My email is username@gmail if you'd like a more candid view from the bottom up.

v

Oh absolutely. Now that I've had unlimited PTO, it's undoubtedly a benefit for the company (they don't have to carry comp time on their books and they don't have to pay out if you leave), and my experience has been that people take fewer days with unlimited bc a) they don't want to be seen as abusing it, b) there's no longer a "you don't use it, you lose it" mentality that forces them to take it, and c) it's still ultimately at the discretion of their manager.

I have it at my new company, and YTD I've taken a total of 7 days off. And I logged in to work remote on 2 of those days. So yeah....definitely not the flex companies think it is. But to the uninformed, they think unlimited is amazing.

Another issue I find with having unlimited that isn't even related to the company....my husband does NOT have unlimited. So I feel guilty taking more time off in a year than he does. So I just don't take time off unless he does.

call me uniformed, i guess. I take plenty of time off. We technically have an HR policy for time off, but my org does not log or track any PTO. I wouldn't even know how to log it if I was asked to.

If you aren't taking the time off, that's on you. I've never understood the people who all of a sudden have 10 days they have to take off in december before they lose their PTO. That just means you aren't taking off time during the year that you likely should. Sure, I've had a day or something that I needed to take, but never much. Most of the times I'd see co-workers trying to burn up vacation in december and I'd ask them what they are doing. The answer was always, I guess I'm just going to hang out at home or something. Seems like a waste to me.

I'll take my unlimited PTO ten times out of ten over some of the vacation policies i've had to work under in the past.

Assuming your boss approves it. We're a small team, so it's usually "so-and-so has already request off" or "as long as you can find someone to back you up while you're out." And then you feel the burden of asking an already overloaded coworker "can you cover me for a week??"

that's not an environment for me. You should never have to feel bad about taking time off from work, which is a benefit from the company. Work-life balance is incredibly important to me.