The average time people stay with a company is falling. You read that right — employees, younger ones in particular, are on average staying at the same company for shorter and shorter periods. I assume this doesn't come as a bolt from the blue to anyone (Gen Z and millennials feeling got at: no offence, I'm one of you), but it is a fact that for a whole range of reasons people are staying put for less time.
“Attracting talent is easier than keeping it” is often the second observation that comes up alongside it. This naturally creates a few problems for companies, especially where productivity and continuity in day-to-day business are concerned; constantly bringing new colleagues up to speed does, after all, consume expensive resources. It starts with the time the person doing the teaching now has to spend on onboarding rather than on their own work, and it ends with errors in business processes that arose purely because some details of the new colleague's tasks fell by the wayside during that ramp-up. A change of staff can therefore cause serious problems in a company, which is why every company should be well armed for such cases.
But how do I tackle the problem as the person responsible? The requirements are actually clear: we have to be able to offer new colleagues a system that sets out in detail the tasks they are to carry out in the company. That system must of course not only be easy to reach but, above all, clear and understandable. Ideally the information in it should come not only from a manager separated from the actual work, but from the (previously) responsible colleague themselves. That is how you make sure the process recorded matches what the company actually does.
Process management as a company guide
One possible answer to this set of requirements is a process management system (sounds unsexy at first glance, but it isn't, promise). Such a system does take time and effort as well, but in return it offers answers to a wide range of problems — staff turnover among them. Process management systems first of all consolidate the existing workflows (processes) running in the company into a central database. A well-filled process management system can therefore already satisfy the requirement of mapping a previous colleague's tasks in detail — check.
You may now be thinking “fine, but finding your way around a system like that costs just as much time”. There is an answer to that too, and the key word is roles. Genuinely good BPM systems are filled in combination with an org chart that rests not only on the individual people in the company but on their role in it. So for the system it isn't Ms Blue who was responsible for product development, but simply the product manager — who in the next step only has to be swapped out. That makes the adjustment considerably more pleasant not only for the new colleague but for the company itself.
Beyond better onboarding, process management can also help keep people in the company — by lastingly improving the working day of the workforce, offering ways to make things better, and focusing the company culture on the success of its own people.
Always having an overview of tasks and responsibilities not only makes things run more smoothly inside the company; it also means the workforce feels less stress in general: if you're not overlooking anything, undiscovered worries can't stress you out either (and mental health matters, as we all know).
An overview of your own workflows also opens up the chance to improve them faster and more effectively. Processes are a way to raise people's productivity — and someone who feels productive and works well in their job is more satisfied too, wouldn't you say?
So with a proper process management system we have a way to make onboarding new colleagues considerably easier, because they can be told the details of their new work far faster — without information getting lost anywhere along the way. At the same time it gives existing staff a method for continuing to improve their own work, and so to always have “something new” in a familiar workplace. A certain amount of ramp-up time and the associated upkeep can't be eliminated, of course … but they can be shortened as far as it is possible to shorten them.