ReThink Productivity Podcast
In this exciting podcast, Simon Hedaux from ReThink Productivity shares his insights and strategies for improving productivity and efficiency in the retail and hospitality industries. With the help of clients, partners, and the ReThink team, Simon covers everything from measuring and tracking productivity to developing and implementing effective strategies.
Whether you're a business owner, manager, or employee, this podcast is a must-listen for anyone who wants to learn how to get more done and improve their bottom line.
Here's what you can expect to learn:
- How to measure and track productivity
- Proven strategies for improving efficiency and reducing waste
- How to create a culture of productivity and innovation
- Tips for motivating and engaging your team
- Real-world examples of how other businesses have used ReThink Productivity to achieve success
Don't miss out on this opportunity to learn from the experts and get ahead of the curve with your own business.
ReThink Productivity Podcast
Insights from WH People: The Hidden Cost Of Labour Turnover
Discover the intricate costs associated with employee turnover and how they impact your business. Join us as we dive deep into the hidden implications and strategies for retention with Helen Seale founding partner at WH People
• Understanding the alarming rise in post-pandemic turnover rates
• Exploring the hidden costs beyond recruitment
• The importance of effective training and onboarding for new employees
• Strategies for creating a more engaging workplace culture
• The role of leadership in employee retention
#theproductivityexperts
Register for the 2025 Productivity Forum
Find us in the Top 50 Productivity Podcasts
Connect to Simon on LinkedIn
Follow ReThink on LinkedIn
and final episode with our friends at WH People, and I'm delighted for Helen Seal to be joining me today. One of the partners. Hi, helen, hi, how?
Speaker 1:are you, yeah, good thanks. Last, but by no means, lisa, thank you. Delighted to have you on. Clearly, for those that have listened to the two, we had, wendy and Paul in previous episodes and today we're going to be talking about the hidden costs around high labour turnover and we'll get into some of the stats and the detail in a second, but before that let's find out a bit about you. So do you want to give us a bit of your kind of career biog, what you've done, how you ended up working with Paul and Helen, paul and Wendy even yeah, no worries at all.
Speaker 2:So I spent most of my career in retail, in fact, in the same retail. I worked for John Lewis and Waitrose for 30-plus years and did everything from operations to running shop floor departments, and then found my way into HR, employee branding, productivity and HR systems, and so when I left John Lewis, I then worked for a company that supported Workday, and that's where I met Wendy, and we worked together there and I was actually in sales looking at system support. And then I moved laterally to Dayforce where I ran the UK sales team selling HRIS and payroll. So that's a potted history of a 35-year career. So that's that's me.
Speaker 1:Excellent. So some, some varied departments you've worked in then, and then finishing with working with Wendy and Paul at Dayforce. That's good. Yeah, so we're going to talk labour turnover. So I assume this is you putting your HR hat back on yes and my retail hat back on yeah and and the reality is that we'll.
Speaker 1:We'll talk about it briefly, but anybody that's listening to this is probably involved in consultancy, hr, hospitality. Some of the figures since lockdown, I suppose, really have been horrendous in terms of 50 labor turnover, hospitality even more so. There's never been a time where it's been that important, I suppose. Peel back some of the layers and think about how much it's really costing you, why it's, why it's costing you that, but also, as we've talked about in some of the other fees, with when, with Wendy and Paul, cost is king. You know national living wage and I contributions. The differential between colleagues, supervisory roles, managers, is on everybody's mind all of the time because it's so big. But we never really talk about how much it costs to manage turnover, do we? Or the underlying causes or all those other things. It's just, I suppose it's a process, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, yeah, it's scary when you think about how long it takes you to get somebody too productive, and if you include that in your hidden costs of your staff turnover, then you're actually getting to a place where it can take you sort of two to three years of somebody's annual salary to replace them, and that's. I think it's the hidden costs that I've always found fascinating, especially in a retail environment, because it does tend to be a high turnover environment. Um, you were lucky if you were at the 20% turnover, and I know, post post-covid it's, uh, as you say, much higher. So it's the hidden costs that I've always been intrigued by.
Speaker 1:So if, if we think, work through some of those, maybe so that there's the kind of true cost of employee turnover, and yeah, how, how would you typically break that down?
Speaker 2:so you're obviously looking at your recruitment, you're hiring, your training, um sort of the sort of the pension costs that you've got for running a very small pension for them for any length of time. So it they tend to be the really obvious costs, um so the the actual physical, how much it costs your recruitment team to replace them, or if you're paying for headhunters, etc. But it's the indirect costs of lost productivity and impact on team morale, disruptions in your customer service. All of those things I think really fascinate and actually make a difference to your bottom line. It's not just the cost of actually replacing the person, it's the impact on your business and its reputation has the real cost.
Speaker 1:And for you, let's use John Lewis. They sell everything clothing, perfume, which I know is maybe a bit more concessions by the brands, luxury handbags, children's wear, have cafes, homeware, lighting. So in that multifaceted environment you know you need different skills to sell lighting and different things in children's wear than to make a cup of coffee. It must be really tricky for retailers that have got a diverse offering to actually get anybody to a level of productivity and proficiency before they leave.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and you know. And the other thing about retail is people tend to forget they, you know they have, they have distribution, finance it. So actually they have all of the, all of the skill sets you need to acquire to run a corporate head office, plus all the skill sets that you need to acquire to run a shop. And John Lewis, at one point I'm sure they don't have it anymore we had eel farmers at one point so you even had to train up people who sort of went out and collected eels at midnight.
Speaker 2:So it's a it's a whole ball game of of skill sets and in the past you relied on the osmosis of the person that was sponsoring the individual to actually be alongside them. I mean, I remember I joined a very long time ago, in the 80s, and my sponsor had been with John Lewis for 30 plus years. So on day one I was working alongside somebody who could give me 30 years of cultural knowledge, of experience of the business, of experience of the area, the customers that live there. So it's a very different place now not John Lewis, I can say, but anywhere now is very different in how you pick up that information and the training required.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that must be a real challenge for those organisations with a big heritage. If you're a trendy start startup and you've almost got one, you're developing it as you go, but those ones with a big heritage must lose that experience and really feel it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you've got to be a lot cleverer at working out what the nuggets of. I mean. Any business right has to be very clever at working out what the nuggets of their points of difference are. How are you different from the next retailer down? And if those are heritage customer service elements, then you have to have an impressive training scheme in place. You have to have an impressive sort of value set that people can understand and buy into really quickly, because if you don't have a point of difference in the high street now, you're going to lose it to the internet.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's something that's always bothered me I think you know, with my productivity hat on and retail hat on is the training of new starters. Yeah, if we take RetailRx, let's keep it generic. Most of their people, if they've got shops, will be general colleagues on the floor. Let's say, working on the tills, putting stock out is a general rule. What I've always seen is and I'm guilty of this as well, so I'm not preaching, I'm kind of preaching to the converted a little bit New colleague X walks through the door and colleague Y on Monday we say brilliant, we think you're going to be great at stock colleague.
Speaker 1:New colleague x walks through the door and colleague y on monday we say brilliant, we think you're going to be great at stock. Uh, go work with um ann and john and they'll show you how we work stock around here. And ann and john will say all right, this is how we do it. We're probably not supposed to do it this way, but this is how we do it. And nelly and phil from 20 years ago, they taught me how to do it. Yeah, we, we embed this training of this is how we do it around here. And then the center have got a completely different view and wonder why the budget doesn't work and productivity is not great and we've got a load of overstock and this, that and the other. So with a high labor turnover almost embedding, let's call it the best practice must be even more crucial because there's a danger that almost you end up with nobody that knows the best way to do it yeah, so you could end up with two.
Speaker 2:You can end up with, um, the person that's been doing the same week 30 years showing you, or you can end up with somebody who actually only started a week ahead of you. Um, so, the actual sort of the training and having online capability so that people can, uh, sort of quickly go to a training database of what the center wants them to do, and also there's new capability now where you can get your best of somebody in another store to record themselves doing it and you can then then use that video to train the people.
Speaker 2:So there's ways around it. I think the practical skills, I think you can find creative ways around it. It's the cultural and the value training that I think is difficult because that so much depends on the person they're talking to. The leadership, investing in your leadership training so that they actually they walk the talk, because there's no point telling somebody that you're brilliant, your, your business is about people, um, and then treating them. Their, their line manager treats that particular individual really badly I was going to say something else and really badly, um, treats them really badly, and then they go. Well, how believable is this business about treating people well? What do you mean? Actually? You just treat your customers well. You don't treat me well, so you've got to live those values in every leader. So I think one of the big investments for me, when you're talking about lowering turnover to increase productivity, is investing in making sure your line managers talk the talk and walk the walk yeah, and I think we we forget, don't we?
Speaker 1:and again throwing back the years when, when I started on the shop floor at college in diy, the business was the people I work with and my line manager. So if I had a good line manager, the business was great actually. If that changed over time and it wasn't that, that reflects the business, so we probably lose sight of. We can have wonderful visions and value statements and great place to work surveys and stuff.
Speaker 2:For most people their direct line manager is their view of the business and can massively shape, positively or negatively, that experience yeah, and one of the clues to any good change, management, training or development that you have in a business is actually working out which level of management is the, the one that either enables or blocks, because there is always a level of management that the message gets down to and they go okay, I've heard them but I'm gonna say like this um, and that's the group that you need influence, and sometimes it's a lot lower down than you think.
Speaker 2:And sometimes it's a lot higher, but working out where your message in your business tends to devolve and change, that's really critical, because that's the group that you need to tackle.
Speaker 1:So if if we're saying labour turnover is not as high as it's ever been, but it's higher than history and kind of peaked just after the pandemic, what are the underlying causes of people leaving that kind of?
Speaker 2:you see, there's probably an obvious one around pay don't want to say it's a hygiene, because it's not. It's very important and getting it right is very important. Um, and one of the things I used to like to do is actually, you know, you do exit interviews. People say, oh, you know, I had these questions to ask. So for me, the the question I would like to ask an exit interview is why did you start looking? Not, why did you leave? Because by the time you actually leave, you're leaving for very positive reasons.
Speaker 2:Normally you've got a job closer to home or the pay's better or the hours are better. But why did you look? Because why you look is the problem you need to solve for your business and quite often that is didn't like the atmosphere, it didn't feel fair, or actually, yeah, my pay rate was was bad and I knew that my friend down the road was getting better pay. So if you can ask the question about what encouraged you to go in the first place, they're the questions that I think give you the outcome for your business and I think you know, obviously, pay hours, etc.
Speaker 2:I think one of the biggest things that is a problem for retail manufacturing anywhere where you need people on site doing the job nowadays, post-covid, is actually you have to make being on site exciting and interesting because they can find jobs where they can sit at home, gets paid similar wages, if not more, and not have commuting issues and child care issues, etc. So you have to create that point of difference that coming to a site and working with a team is exciting and and and good. So I think those two, those two are probably one of the key turnovers for for any presenteeism business, which is, you know, obviously actually having to be there. Then after that, it's always line management. Right, it's always how the team are created, how the team feel, how how the manager, whether it's a fair environment, whether they're engaging with them, whether they're challenging them, whether they're making the job exciting and it's interesting because, having worked in shops, worked in head offices, worked in our own business, the one thing I miss is being in a shop.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if someone still do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so especially Christmas uh, yeah, mean, diy was a bit more Easter, so kind of the time I'm recording, but there again, boots was Christmas, but it's that, and some of it's my probably control freak, managing the shop and kind of being the orchestra a little bit, I suspect, but it's that maybe taking over a shop that wasn't doing great, making it better for customers and colleagues through people, feeling connected on a daily basis to a team, feeling like you're doing something positive or it's getting better dealing with adversity. So all those things we talked about, you know levers, starters, people falling out, and all those things you get with a group of people, something happening at Christmas, do that, shouldn't that you have to deal with the next?
Speaker 2:day.
Speaker 1:I don't kind of miss some of that, but there is something about if you get it right. There's just an energy that you can't quite put your finger on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, 100%.
Speaker 2:I think retail can be. Oh, retail can be probably one of the most exciting places and one of the places that I have learned the most about myself, about how to work with other people. It's. There is just something, there's a buzz about it that you just don't get anywhere else. But we have to be really realistic. The buzz is there. It's a great place to work, but if you compare it to I don't know, maybe working in sales for hr, sort of an hr system, the rewards are very different. So you've got to be there because you love the environment and and you love, you have a passion for it, not because you think you're going to be able to retire and buy a Ferrari with it. And that's the fundamental issue that anything I think like retail hospitality, you have to create that atmosphere because there is nothing else that's going to make that a better job than other things. If it's not a good job and a better atmosphere and a sense of camaraderie and teamship, it's not going to be the salaries ever that keep people yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 1:In terms of strategies to reduce turnover, are there any kind of top three that you've got that people are starting to implement, or that you're an advocate of?
Speaker 2:so I think you have to get I mean you very, very simply, the top two have to be pay and, uh, flexible scheduling. Right, you have to, you have to be able to create an environment where somebody can get good pay and somebody can actually work hours that work for their family because of their, their fundamental hygiene. After that, it's about creating an environment where employees are recognized, where their line managers actually treat them as individuals, see their skill sets, use their skill sets, develop their skill sets. So the first two are hygiene, and then it's about actually understanding who the person is and what they need from the business and then developing support that enables them to get what they want out of working for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's interesting, isn't? It don't want in a team is everybody wants to be the next managing director, because that's just not going to happen. But also, what you don't want is everybody's just happy to do the hours they do and plod along at the rate they plod along. You need that diversity of team. And yeah, and again, I think historically, probably in my experience, lots of appraisal reward pro processes have been quite binary. It's a, it feels like a process in a form that somebody's ticking the box or somebody's answering a criterion, rest, um, structured question that's based on a specific skill set and if you're good at that, means this is your next job, where, again, we're seeing lots more informal stuff now 15 minute coffee chats once a month and and that people are far more open to tell you how they think and feel without feeling that it's going to impact their career yeah, no, and I mean, depending on how your pay sister works, you may need, you may need a formal point in which you record it, because that may drive a pay point.
Speaker 2:But actually getting to know the individual that works for you as an individual, um, seeing what motivates them, because some people you know, we all know some of us are motivated by being the best we can be. Some of us are motivated by being the best in the group. So if, if I'm, if I'm just motivated by my own development and actually wanting to be the best at what I do I want to be the best graphic, or I want to be the best at what I do, I want to be the best bra fitter, I want to be the best carpet salesman then actually that's a different skill set. Actually I just want to learn new things every day. I have no ambition, but I want to learn new things. You might then move me around different departments. So, knowing what motivates somebody, why they come to work outside of the hygiene factors, why they're there, what keeps them there, that's the skill, for good leadership is actually understanding the individual, and it doesn't take long.
Speaker 1:You don't have to spend two hours with them to work out what will actually float their boat for the next month yeah, absolutely, and have you got any kind of, as we close off, any top tips for the listeners in terms of retention?
Speaker 2:uh, so yes, well, I think it's probably fairly obvious where I'm coming from. Treat everybody as an individual, work out what they want. And just remember, as a business, if you don't know what your productivity, how long it takes you to get somebody productive in that area, you really don't know what your hidden costs are. So use your data to work out. Can you even measure what it's costing you? And therefore sometimes people will go oh, somebody's resigned. I'm just not.
Speaker 2:But actually if you're, if it's somebody you want to keep, work it out, because that could save you six months worth of productivity issues by just sitting down with them and trying to solve it. Then now, if you can solve it earlier than that because you've treated them as an individual, you'd understood what they needed. You're in a very different place. But I think understanding what it costs to make somebody productive in your business and I don't mean just onboarding, I mean getting them from the day they start to the day they actually make a financial contribution that would be the equivalent of one of your good members of staff, um and investing in the processes that improve people quickly and retain them post that that's that for me, is about understanding how you can reduce costs. It's not a fluffy hr training development issue. It's a bottom line cost saving exercise.
Speaker 1:Excellent. On that note, we'll pause there. I think there's been three really insightful episodes from yourself, wendy, and Paul and Helen. If people have been kind of inspired or it's prompted some questions, this episode in chat, where's the best place for them to find you?
Speaker 2:so they can find me on linkedin or they can find me at the team at whpeoplecom amazing.
Speaker 1:I really appreciate your time fantastic pleasure it's uh made me reminisce a little bit of how much in stores of people. But, um, I don't know if I'll ever get back there, but I do enjoy walking around with clients. You always feel a bit more connected to what's going on.
Speaker 2:I love being in a shop, but not actually a shopper, interestingly yeah, exactly, exactly appreciate your time and yours, thank you.
