Seeing the Forest for the Trees
I enjoy reading materials from a wide variety of sources, as this practice stimulates creativity. When I read the story in USA Today about the high turnover rate among nursing staff and attempts to remedy that problem with residency programs and careful mentoring, I thought of the quality control issues implied for hospital patients with such turnover. Then I tried, without success, to find comparable figures for the small business sector. But certainly the message is clear: higher staff turnover correlates with higher quality control problems which, in turn, imply something about the organization’s management practices. These management practices, and the staff turnover they cause, can increase the susceptibility of your small business to human error, the most frequent cause of disasters. Develop more enlightened management practices, retain experienced and valuable staff and your business will become more secure and more resilient. So, let us in the small business sector all learn from the mistakes of the hospitals and consider what we can do to improve our working environments.