Over the past now nearly a decade, we at Transforma have
assessed thousands from across India. During these assessments, we have always
focused on the values and beliefs of those who we have assessed, not their skills
and knowledge
Based on the findings out of these assessments, we
have made recommendations as to what the organization should do. In a number of
cases, we have subsequently worked with these organizations to help them implement
these action plans
During this nearly decade-long journey, we have sometimes
stumbled upon benefits that have accrued to these organizations that were not
part of our central focus when we started out with the first step : assessments
based on qualities, not qualifications. One
such area is the impact on employee attrition
In the past 18 months, the volume of evidence on this
count : attrition rates, has made us sit up and take notice of it in manner
that we had not till date. And the
quantum of impact has made us recognize that the correlation between actions
taken out of assessments conducted by Transforma and attrition rates at these
organizations is far wider and deeper than we had envisaged
Consider the data in Table 1 from ABC Corp - an
organization where we launched our ‘Ekalavya Program’ about 30 months ago ( The
first phase of this development initiative lasts 2 years )
Table I
Employee Attrition Rate at ABC Corp
|
||
Month, Year
|
Attrition Rate
|
Indexed Value
|
Nov-09
|
32.00%
|
100
|
Nov-10
|
25.00%
|
78
|
Nov-11
|
10.00%
|
31
|
Mar-12
|
5.00%
|
16
|
The numbers above therefore talk of the rate at which
employees were leaving the organization :
·
In Nov ’09 : Just before commencement of Phase – I of
the ‘Ekalavya Program’
·
In Nov ’10 : Half-way into it i.e. one year after the
launch of the development initiative
·
In Nov ’11 : At nearly the end of Phase I, and finally
·
In Mar ’12 : The current situation
The graph shows both the nature as well as the scale
of reduction over these 30 months
Applying the attrition rates to the number of
employees gives an idea of the reduction in the need for fresh recruitments and
the consequent workload on the organization to spend time and effort on
replenishing its manpower just to keep it running
Such time and resources have an opportunity cost :
they could have been better deployed in helping the organization achieve
superior results – improved productivity and consequent profitability, as well
as building a foundation for the future. In effect, the demands on time to
simply replace a set of people leaving the organization results in running in
circles
So, to the question that needs to be asked : How did
assessments based on the framework of the Transforma Tree, in other words,
looking at the values and beliefs of the individuals, rather than their skills
and knowledge, lead to a reduction of 84% in attrition rates?
The answer is that it changed things fundamentally on
two counts
Factor # I : That people don’t leave organizations, -
they leave their bosses. In other words, the primary trigger for an employee to
quit is his immediate boss. How my immediate superior deals with me decides
whether I feel valued and energized, and as a consequence makes me want to stay
on with an organization
The point is the actions of my boss that make me feel
wanted do not arise out his qualifications, but out of his human qualities, -
things that naturally reside in him, things that cannot be changed. And when we
move the focus during assessments to these inherent, non-trainable qualities of
the boss to do so, we end up discovering whether he truly has the ability to
deliver at that level of responsibility
And the second factor : the shift in focus during
recruitment of fresh manpower to replace those who had left - not their
aptitude, but trying to understand their attitude. Checking for things such as
whether the prospective employee is driven by the need for immediate
gratification or is happy to receive greater but delayed rewards. Whether someone
else’s winning makes the person miserable or does he take joy in it. Whether he
sees himself as a victim of circumstances or the architect of his destiny
For these form what we call his inherent character.
And as the ancient Olympics said, ‘Character builds Destiny’
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