Turnover – Stop Kicking the Can Down the Road

Personnel “turnover” on a design team can’t be addressed until it happens, right? In a literal sense, that is true, but in reality, viewing turnover that way is short-sighted and extremely problematic.   
Before the pandemic, design team turnover was averaging more than 25 percent. Now, after the “great resignation,” it’s like a revolving door. No sooner than you have learned a new name, you are interviewing again, learning yet another new name. There is no continuity, everything is disjointed, style sheets aren’t adhered to, subtle nuances specific to particular advertisers are missed, and learning curve issues are a daily challenge. A publishing operation simply can’t operate within constant revolving door chaos . . . it just doesn’t work!
For smaller teams, a looming hole means panic and stress, with typically only two weeks to fill the position. Being selective and fully vetting candidates doesn’t happen in such a compressed timeframe. Frequently after it’s too late, it becomes clear a candidate oversold themselves, isn’t going to mesh well with the existing team, or has red flags you would have seen if you had vetted them more fully.
If you can’t fill the position in time, existing design team members are forced to pick up the workload, increasing costs and decreasing job satisfaction. Vacation time and quality time with family get kicked to the curb. Outstanding design work doesn’t happen under such prolonged circumstances.   
Let’s face it, “there are other places to work,” and publishing, when it comes to compensation, isn’t the top of the ladder for a talented, experienced designer. Quite likely, the existing team member is leaving for more money. It’s currently an “employee marketplace” so replacing them will likely cost more. 
It’s not supposed to happen, but existing team members often get wind of the new hire’s salary. When that happens, operations can experience a mass exodus that makes the original hole to fill look like a divot — now you have a real problem, multiple holes to fill, a.k.a. catastrophic turnover.
Even though profit margins were already slim, what you budgeted for design team payroll for the year, melts down, and you are forced to step it up to compete for talent.
Let’s assume you navigated all of the above and stabilized the ship until the next turnover bug hits the design team. That exercise costs a lot of money in hard costs such as recruitment ads, background checks, drug testing, etc. Those costs pale compared to the soft costs; however, onboarding time by HR, management time for orientation and workflows, training, etc., far exceed the hard costs. 
Commensurate with their salary, the costs of a new hire can run between $4- and $20 K. Since there is certainly more turnover to come — when you multiply those costs over 5- and 10-year increments [no matter the size of your design team] those dollars add up to a lot of money.
So, when you compile all the above: stress, time, increased chance for more turnover, increased likelihood for errors, inflated payroll, and all the money expended in hard and soft costs — why would you do it once, much less repeatedly, year after year . . . if you don’t have to?
There Has to be a Better Way to Deal with Turnover
We all know what doing the same thing repeatedly while expecting a different result is called. However, until a viable alternative is presented, we think the repeated scenario above is “just the way it is.”
The good news is that by partnering with Adroitsquare, “the way it is” no longer has to be. Instead of “kicking the can down the road,” awaiting what you know will come: more attrition and turnover, you call us instead.
A 30-minute call, a little time to onboard you onto our proprietary platform, and a pass or two operating in parallel to ensure you feel confident . . . all at no charge whatsoever, and you’re done, no more worries or issues with turnover on your design team ever again.
Yes, it is truly free and that simple! You’ll be ready for whatever comes, and there is no obligation whatsoever to utilize our world-class design team until you have a need. It’s called “futureproofing,” also called “thinking ahead,” instead of having to panic every time the attrition and turnover bug hits your design team again.
  • Consider what you will be missing:
  • Weeks of interviewing multiple candidates
  • Inflated salaries due to the shortage of talent
  • Stress and panic trying to fill a position within a couple of weeks
  • Bad hires who oversold themselves during the interview process
  • Increased workload and tensions within the existing design team
  • Hard costs for recruitment ads, background checks, and drug testing
  • Soft costs for HR to onboard and management time to orient and train
  • Design team costs continually rising [instead of decreasing by 40 to 60%]
It gets better, not only will you never have to worry about turnover ever again, but challenges with vacations, leaves of absence, maternity leaves, and health issues disappear going forward as well. 
All boats rise because we “play well with others,” smoothly integrating with existing teams. Existing teams are happier due to reduced workloads, and management can “manage” instead of constantly orienting and training new hires. [Not to mention having to put out fires with a disgruntled advertiser whose ad was bungled.] 
It may be a daily or weekly newspaper, shopper publication, magazine, specialty publication, supplement, or whatever, including sales collateral for some new initiative. You may want to launch a new publication or website to grow revenue without risking hiring until you test the waters. Think of Adroitsquare as push-button staffing on the fly, whenever and however you may need world-class design.
Adroitsquare is completely scalable upon demand, ramp up to meet any challenge at the snap of your fingers . . . no sticky contracts or long-term commitments required. Just a world-class design team ready when you are and idled at no ongoing costs when sidelined at your discretion.
Procrastinating, a.k.a. “kicking the can down the road” when it comes to turnover challenges, just makes no sense when there is an easy solution at hand. There is a “better way” to deal with turnover; reach out to Adroitsquare today so you’ll be prepared for turnover tomorrow.
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