Every company, every department, every team has one thing in common: they lose employees.  Because turnover is a fact of organizational life, any strategy to reduce that cost can only have a positive affect to the bottom line.  One key strategy is to conduct AND REVIEW exit interviews to determine what negative trends may be causing people to leave.

One company that has used this information to its benefit has been Accenture (Wall Street Journal, April 21, 2008) which discovered many talented employees were leaving because they wished to work in a different field.  Armed with that information, Accenture developed a program that supports internal career moves.  Now, top performers are encouraged to stay.

Other companies with similar initiatives include IBM, Verizon, Microsoft,Dow Chemicals, and Ernst & Young.

Do you regularly review your exit interviews?  Are there other problems these reports can help you fix? 

Even if you are a small company, this strategy can still work.  Here's a personal example:

Early in my career, I was Operations Manager for a specialty retailer chain at a $13 mil store.  One of our top department managers had reached the point where she perceived her job lacked challenge.  She was "on top of her game," but bored.  Her options to find the next level of challenge increasingly pointed to her leaving the company.  I suggested she might find new challenges, and at the same time develop an entirely new set of skills, if she switched over to the operations side.  After some thought, she agreed, made the switch, worked hard, and established herself as a top performer there as well.

What internal switches can you make to reinvigorate your top talent?