Your 50% Turnover Rate Isn't a "Hiring Problem"—It's a Leadership Failure
Your 50% Turnover Rate Isn't a "Hiring Problem"—It's a Leadership Failure
Let me paint you a picture:
You hire someone. Give them a two-week "orientation" that's mostly HR paperwork and a tour of the building. Then you say "go."
No clarity on what they're actually supposed to do. No understanding of why their role matters. No framework for how their work connects to anything else.
People start dumping random tasks on them. They have no idea who to ask for help. They're drowning in terminology they don't understand while trying to figure out processes nobody explained.
They quit within weeks. And you call it a "hiring problem."
I sat down with Danielle Suprick—workplace engineer with a background in mechanical engineering who pivoted to IO psychology after seeing massive gaps in how companies treat humans—and she walked into a company with over 50% annual turnover tasked with fixing it.
Her diagnosis? It's not the people you're hiring. It's everything you're doing after you hire them.
And the kicker? Most of you are making the exact same mistakes.
The Onboarding That Doesn't Exist
Here's what passes for "onboarding" at most companies:
Day 1: HR paperwork, benefits enrollment, here's your laptop, here's the bathroom.
Day 2-5: "Shadow" someone who's too busy to actually train you.
Week 2: Figure it out yourself or admit you don't know what you're doing and look incompetent.
Then you wonder why people leave.
Danielle heard this exact story—someone hired, given zero real onboarding, told to "go talk to a client" when she had no frame of reference for the problem, the client, or even what her actual responsibilities were.
She quit after two weeks.
And leadership was probably sitting around a conference table saying: "We need to hire better people. These millennials just don't want to work."
No. You just suck at onboarding.
The problem isn't that you hired the wrong person. The problem is you gave them no chance to succeed.
The 50% Turnover Nobody Took Seriously
Danielle was brought into a manufacturing company with over 50% annual turnover.
Read that again. More than half the workforce left every year.
And leadership's brilliant plan? "Come help us fix this."
No data. No analysis. No understanding of what was actually broken.
So Danielle did what any good IO psychologist would do: She went and talked to people.
Novel concept, right?
She spent a month talking to department managers and—here's the revolutionary part—the people actually doing the jobs on the floor.
What did she find?
Lack of role clarity. People didn't understand what they were supposed to be doing.
No understanding of knowledge, skills, and abilities needed for their positions.
Zero connection between what they did daily and why it mattered.
No structured onboarding process that equipped people to actually do the work.
This is what happens when you scale without fixing fundamentals. When you treat employees like interchangeable parts instead of humans who need context, purpose, and clarity.
The Job Analysis Nobody's Doing
Danielle's solution started with something most companies skip entirely: Job analysis.
Not relying on outdated job descriptions written five years ago by someone who never did the job.
Actually understanding what the role requires.
She went to the people doing the work and asked:
What do you actually do day-to-day?
What knowledge do you need?
What skills are essential?
How does your work connect to others?
What creates quality in your output?
Then she used that data to create real onboarding programs that equipped people to succeed.
Not just "here's how to use the software." But:
Here's WHY we do this
Here's how your work impacts the customer
Here's what quality looks like
Here's who depends on you doing this well
That's how you build competent, engaged employees instead of confused people counting down until they can quit.
The "Production Workers Don't Need to Know Why" Bullshaet
Here's where Danielle's story gets infuriating.
She was told—by someone in a leadership position—that "production workers don't need to know HOW they do something or WHY they do it. They just need to know WHAT to do."
Let that sink in.
Treat people like mindless robots. Wonder why they don't give a shaet about quality. Surprised when they leave.
Danielle's response? "You're completely missing the point of the human aspect of it."
But here's the reality: This mindset is everywhere.
Leaders who think:
Employees are just cogs in the machine
People should be grateful to have a job
Understanding purpose and meaning is a luxury
Engagement and satisfaction are "soft" concerns
These aren't leaders. They're ineffective managers cosplaying as executives.
Because here's what IO psychology—and basic farcking human psychology—tells us:
When people understand WHY they're doing something, they're more satisfied, more engaged, more productive, and more likely to stay.
When they see how their work connects to outcomes that matter, they take pride in it.
When they understand the bigger picture, they make better decisions without constant oversight.
This isn't soft. This is how you build high-performing teams instead of resentful bodies filling space.
The Observation Exercise That Changed Everything
Danielle implemented training that included this exercise:
Have people on the production floor observe without instruction.
Not "look for defects." Not "check these specific things."
Just observe.
And here's what happened: People saw things they'd never noticed before.
Because when you tell someone exactly what to look for, they become blind to everything else.
When you give them context and let them observe with understanding, they start seeing patterns, identifying problems, suggesting improvements.
That's the difference between a trained employee and an engaged problem-solver.
But you can't get there if your approach is: "Stand here. Do this. Don't ask why. We don't pay you to think."
The Purpose, Value, and Ownership People Are Craving
Danielle nailed something most leaders miss:
"People are craving a sense of purpose, value, and ownership from their jobs."
Not free snacks. Not ping pong tables. Not "we're a family" bullshaet while you grind them into dust.
They want to understand:
Why does my work matter?
How does what I do create value?
Who depends on me doing this well?
What impact am I making?
When people have answers to these questions, they don't quiet quit.
They show up. They care. They contribute. They stay.
When they don't have these answers? They're gone the second a better opportunity appears.
And you'll keep churning through bodies, wondering why "nobody wants to work anymore" while completely missing that you've created a workplace where nobody wants to work for you.
The Buy-In You're Not Creating
Here's another critical insight from Danielle:
When you involve people in improving their own processes—when you ask for their input on job descriptions, skills matrices, training programs—they buy in.
Not because you told them to. Because they had agency in shaping it.
Danielle brought production workers into discussions about rewriting job descriptions:
"Is this accurate? What should we change? What's really valuable that we should keep? What can we redistribute?"
This creates ownership. Accountability. Investment in the outcome.
But most companies do this:
Leadership decides what needs to change
Announces it to the organization
Expects compliance
Wonders why there's resistance
You're treating adults like children. Then surprised when they don't act like partners in the business.
The Skills Matrix Nobody's Building
Danielle mentioned working with departments on skills matrices.
This is basic competency management, and most companies don't have it.
What skills does this role actually require?
Who has them? Who's developing them? Who needs training?
What can we verify? What knowledge is trapped in one person's head?
Without this clarity:
You can't hire effectively
You can't train systematically
You can't identify gaps until someone quits
You can't promote people with confidence
You can't scale without chaos
With this clarity:
Hiring becomes strategic
Training becomes targeted
Succession planning becomes possible
Quality becomes consistent
Scaling becomes sustainable
But it requires doing the work to actually understand what people do and what they need to do it well.
Most companies skip this because it's "not urgent."
Then they wonder why their 50% turnover is destroying institutional knowledge and crushing productivity.
The First Step You're Not Taking
Danielle's advice for companies wanting to fix this?
Go talk to your people.
Not based on outdated job descriptions. Not assumptions about what they do.
Actually talk to them:
What do you do day-to-day?
What knowledge do you need that you didn't get in onboarding?
What creates quality in your work?
What do you wish you'd known when you started?
Who do you depend on? Who depends on you?
Use structured interview questions. Gather actual data. Understand the reality of the work.
Then use that to build onboarding that actually works.
Not orientation. Onboarding.
Teaching people:
How to do the work
Why the work matters
How it connects to everything else
What quality looks like
Who to ask for help
The terminology and processes unique to your organization
This is how you turn new hires into productive contributors instead of confused flight risks.
The Industrial-Organizational Psychology You're Ignoring
Here's what IO psychology offers that most companies desperately need:
Industrial side (individual level):
Selection and hiring processes that work
Recruitment strategies based on actual requirements
Training and development that builds capability
Organizational side (system level):
Leadership development
Change management
Process improvement
All backed by data, evidence, and research.
Not gut feelings. Not "how we've always done it." Not whatever the latest leadership book said.
Science-based approaches to managing humans at work.
And the ROI? Danielle walked into 50% turnover and started fixing it with structured analysis and human-centered solutions.
What's 50% turnover costing you?
The recruiting expenses. The training that goes nowhere. The lost productivity. The knowledge drain. The impact on morale when people keep leaving.
Versus the cost of actually doing onboarding right and treating people like humans who need purpose and clarity.
Do the math. It's not even close.
Watch the Damn Episode
This conversation with Danielle went deep into job analysis methodologies, the science of workplace psychology, and why treating employees like thinking, feeling humans instead of replaceable parts creates sustainable business expansion instead of perpetual churn.
If you're dealing with turnover, struggling with engagement, or just wondering why your team doesn't seem to care—this episode will show you exactly where you're failing and how to fix it.
Watch the full episode here because Danielle's frameworks for building business relationships with your own employees are the foundation for everything else you're trying to build.
P.S. That leader who said production workers "don't need to know why"?
That person shouldn't be leading anyone.
If you think people should just shut up and do what they're told without understanding purpose or context, you're not building a high-performing organization.
You're building a prison where people show up for a paycheck and leave their brains at the door.
And you'll keep losing people to competitors who actually treat them like humans.
The companies winning on retention and performance? They're the ones giving people purpose, clarity, and ownership.
Not because it's nice. Because it works.
P.P.S. If your response to 50% turnover is "we need to hire better people" instead of "we need to examine why people keep leaving"—you're the problem.
The signal is screaming at you: SOMETHING IS FUNDAMENTALLY BROKEN.
But instead of doing the work to understand what, you're just cycling through more bodies and hoping the next batch sticks.
They won't.
Not until you fix your onboarding. Not until you provide role clarity. Not until you help people understand why their work matters.
Go watch the episode. Learn from Danielle. And for god's sake, go talk to your employees about what they actually need to succeed instead of guessing and wondering why everyone keeps quitting.
The data is right there. You just have to actually collect it.
Karl Pontau hosts The Human Connection Podcast, where we talk about the stuff that actually matters in business: the humans running it. Because whether you're B2B or B2C, it's really H2H—human to human. Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode where we probably say something that'll make your HR department uncomfortable.
