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Turnover Turnaround
Mike Coonrod, sbjLive Producer

Turnover Turnaround

Posted online

Want to drop your employee attrition rate by nearly 50%? Jay Rasmussen, General Manager with Ameripride, shares how they lowered their turnover rate from 70% to 22% in a year’s time. Understanding why employees quit, establishing a clear mission and opening lines of communication are steps to become an employer of choice.

Duration: 2:19

Transcription:

I'm Jay Rasmussen. I'm the general manager here at AmeriPride.

What are the different reasons why people leave their job?

They don't like their boss, or they feel like they don't know if they're winning, or losing are a couple big ones.

They don't have the tools they need to succeed. One of the things that we have found is people have to know what they're a part of.

Why are they here? Why am I doing laundry for a living? It's my job, and the leadership's job here to help them understand, why are we here. Do a great job for the customer. You can get promoted. The benefits are amazing.

We do tuition reimbursement. Leadership training is available for anyone who wants it.

What's great is, on the service side, we call them our customer service representatives, the route drivers that service the customers, deliver the laundry, there is zero percent turnover in those positions. We turned over a couple last year. But zero this year and zero six years before that. There's no turnover in those positions. We tried to translate some of what was happening on that side of the house to what we call the processing side.

We've gone from a turnover rate of 70% down to, in just a year's time, it's down to 22%. We're really excited about that.

We have to make sure that these people understand on day one why they're here, and why they should stick around and see what's going on. We also need to follow up with them later in the day if they're doing a good job. Make sure they know they're appreciated. You know, a visit from the general manager, the department head. "Hey, how's it going? How are you holding up?"

A big part of that is having a training partner that facilitates that process. Also, a 30 day review. "Hey, are we on track? Is there anything that we need to correct?" That's fair to the person to know that, to not be thinking that they're doing a great job and the feeling isn't necessarily mutual.

Get that corrected, make sure they're on track, and start the hiring process. When the 60 days is up, they're an AmeriPride employee and we're off and running. That's easier said than done.

That's been a big part of how we've really lowered the attrition.

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