worker_defection_and_company

We all know that it costs a lot of money when we lose an employee. Whether it’s “worker defection”—an employee leaving to go to work for another company—or any other source of turnover, losing an employee creates a huge hole in the team, a hole that it costs money and time to plug. But did you know that worker defection may cost you a lot more than that?

According to data gathered by Gartner, Inc. roughly 40% of workers in the U.S. use their own personal smartphones, desktops, or laptops for work every day. In fact, the phenomenon is so prevalent there’s even an acronym for it: BYOD (Bring Your Own Device). With all that data flying around—sometimes to non-work machines—you run the risk of losing not just a worker when an employee leaves, but also information. Even if a departing employee doesn’t inadvertently walk off with company files on his or her laptop or smartphone, there may have been important communication conducted via text messaging or personal emails that are lost when the employee is gone.

Even in a best-case scenario, it costs a lot of money and time to recruit, hire, train, and assimilate a new team member when an old one leaves. Taking into account that a survey commissioned by Indeed.com found that 25% of all workers in the U.S. are thinking about looking for a different job in the next year, while another 27% responded that they weren’t necessarily looking, but that it was a possibility; that’s more than half of all workers considering changing jobs in the next year!

When an employee leaves, it can cost up to 150% of their first year’s salary to replace them. Fortunately, project management software can not only help make sure that their work stays when an employee goes, but make the “ramp up” period for their replacement much shorter, which saves your business time, money, and productivity.

Here’s the thing: A project without history is a project without memory. If your team management has been scattered across various emails, text messages, and devices, you’re going to lose a lot more than a team member every time an employee leaves. With project tracking software like ConductorLIVE you can keep all information in one place, so that it’s still there when someone hits the road, and ready for the next person who steps up. With online project management software, there’s a dedicated hub for all team communications and file sharing. That means no one person can take it with them when they go, and whoever has to step into their shoes is going to be much better prepared to hit the ground running.

The specter of employee turnover can be scary and expensive, but it doesn’t have to spell disaster for your team or project. With the help of online project management solutions such as ConductorLIVE, organizations are finding new and better ways to empower collaboration without sacrificing a lot of time, money, or productivity—especially when a team member chooses to leave.