Costs of Staff Turnover in Your Marketing Department

Marketing Department turnover has an impact, not just on the Marketing Department, but in other parts of the organization. For example, a lack of fully trained resources (trained in the company’s way of marketing) can force marketing projects to be delayed, which can lead to loss of sales or delay to the market with the formal release of a new product.

Hiring and retaining skilled staff is always a high priority for managers who direct marketing functions. If we create turnover, then we face a series of costs.

Cost Categories

There are four major categories of costs associated with the turnover of positions.

Staff Labor

Non-staff Related

Training

Productivity

1. Staff Labor Costs

The company expends labor costs searching for a new employee. These include:

Scheduling and conducting the interview

Background check

Processing paperwork

Orientation

Attending job fairs

2. Non-staff Related Costs

Non-labor recruiting costs include:

Advertising

Drug Testing

Associated costs and overhead allocations to manage involved departments.

3. Training Costs

Marketing continues to evolve. Consider, for example, Social Media that did not exist, even a few years ago. The whole field of Inbound Marketing has exploded. Staff needs to obtain new training and refresh past skills. Training could cost up to 5%.

4. Productivity

Even a well-oiled machine will hit a few bumps integrating a new employee. A few of these items are:

Employee not yet up to speed with department, division or company practices.

Manager concentrating with on-boarding the new employee rather than other duties.

The usual smooth hand-offs between team members require more effort to avoid dropping the ball on processes and procedures.

How Can We Avoid These Costs?

As managers, we need to be active in managing our employees and departments. Key activities to help prevent turnover include:

Letting employees know they did a good job and are appreciated.

Team building and camaraderie activities help employees feel connected.

A simple pat on the back and “thank you” do not cost anything but go far in the bonding process.

Pitch in and pick up some tasks when the team or an individual is trying their best to meet a deadline, but cannot meet it.

Provide new challenges and opportunities to expand knowledge and learn new skills.

The Takeaway

Turnover of staff is natural, over the course of time. We can minimize turnover by engaging, encouraging and rewarding staff as part of our day-to-day management.

That Is My Thinking. Over to You.

1. How do you minimize marketing staff turnover?

2. What kinds of recognition or rewards do you employ?

3. Do you find that Marketing turnover is similar or dissimilar to other staff types?

Copyright 2011 by Rob Berman