Thinking of Leaving? The Reality of Church Staff Turnover

Why are nearly 43% of church staff members seriously considering quitting their jobs? Uncover the startling reality behind church staff turnover and the crucial factors driving this trend. We'll shed light on the reasons behind this high turnover rate—from job dissatisfaction and lack of growth opportunities to personal circumstances. If you're a lead or executive pastor, this episode is an essential guide to understanding and addressing these pressing issues.

Join us, Todd Rhoades, co-founder of Chemistry Staffing, as we dissect our latest Healthy Church Staff Assessment findings. We’ll discuss straightforward, actionable strategies to enhance employee engagement and retention within your church. From providing new challenges and growth opportunities to reviewing compensation packages, learn how to make your staff feel valued and supported. Don't miss these key insights that could significantly impact your church's future stability and create a more fulfilling work environment for your team.

Have questions or comments? Send to podcast@chemistrystaffing.com

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Is Your Church Hiring?
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Transcript

Speaker 0: 0:07

Hi there, welcome to the Healthy Church Staff podcast. My name is Todd Rhodes. I'm one of the co-founders of chemistrystaffingcom and we've been going through a series if you've been joining us here on the podcast of looking at what we learned last year in our Healthy Church Staff Assessment. We've looked at all different kinds of categories and this week is our final week looking at what we learned last year, and we're talking this week about what we call future stability. How long if you're on a church staff, how long? What's your future look like? Are you planning on staying? Is it seem? Staying at your church is something that you want to do, and we're going to unpack all that today. So today we're going to talk. The title today is Thinking of Leaving. Here's the Reality of Church Staff Turnover, employee Turnover and again, a lot of this comes from our Healthy Church Staff Assessment that we did last year and essentially we gave a statement and we asked we had almost 1,100, a little over 1,000 church staff people respond to this. Here's the statement that we gave them. The statement was I have thought seriously about leaving my current church position within the past year. The response options ranged from one to five, five being strongly agree, one being strongly disagree. So here are the results 42.7%. Almost 43% of staff agreed with the statement that they have thought seriously within the past year about leaving their current church job. And so the fact that over 40% of if your church is normal some churches the number's way higher than that Other churches are very stable and the number's much lower but if your church is average on that scale, of the 1,100 people that filled out the assessment last year, about 40% four in 10 of your staff have considered leaving their position in the past year, and that, if you're a lead pastor or an executive pastor, that should be a significant concern of yours to make sure that you look into this, because if you've got four in 10 of your staff that's seriously considered leaving, it really does suggest that there are probably some factors there that need to be worked on.

Speaker 0: 2:31

There could be various reasons that people say, yeah, I have seriously considered looking at a different church staff job, or maybe not even a church staff job, just another job. It could be a number of reasons. Could be job dissatisfaction. It could be that there's a lack of growth opportunities. We see that especially with younger people that are looking for ways to be able to grow within the organization or within the church that they are Could be some personal circumstances. Maybe some staff members may feel like their skills and talents aren't being fully utilized and they feel maybe a little stagnated. But regardless of this level of turnover intention nearly 40% indicates a real need for a lot of churches to take some proactive steps to address the underlying issues and create a more supportive and engaging and fulfilling work environment. So, while it's encouraging to see that, so is what a little over 40% but 47% of staff agreed that they've not really considered leaving. So that's good. But we also have to remember the 10% there's kind of 10% right there in the middle that their future and those are people that can be swayed, those are people that can be encouraged to stick around.

Speaker 0: 4:10

And if you're neutral, the wavering that kind of goes on in your own heart and mind as you consider your future in ministry and your future for your salary, for your family. How do we address, what are some strategies that we can make if you are in charge of a staff, what are some things that you can do even today to start to do to address those that may be on their way out or may be thinking they're on their way out. There are some actionable steps that you can take. First of all and this seems really simple, but just enhancing your employee engagement, engaging with your employees, making sure that they feel recognized, that they feel valued that can go make a world of difference. Make sure that you provide more opportunities for staff. Make sure, if some people and you may know some that may just feel like they're in a rut or not being challenged give them some new challenges and again offer some praise and feedback and make them feel valued. That's first.

Speaker 0: 5:11

Second of all, it could be and we didn't mention this before, but we hear this quite often as we interview candidates it could be that you need to review your compensation and benefits package to make sure that they are still competitive with other organizations and other churches. Salary and financial arrangements are not everything, but they are very important and they're one of the main reasons we see that people move from one church staff position to another. And it's not just salary, it's health benefits, it's retirement plans, it's professional development opportunities, all of those. If you have any room in your budget and you've not looked at compensation packages for the last couple of years, it's something that you really need to do, particularly in the last couple of years with all the inflation and the economy news that we've seen. If you need any help with that area, reach out to me. You can always reach out to me at podcast at chemistrystaffingcom. It's one of the things that I help churches do is we can enter into a short-term agreement to review your compensation package for either one employee or for your whole staff. That will really help.

Speaker 0: 6:18

Okay, that's number two. Number three I really feel like I shouldn't have to say this, but open communication on both sides is really important. If you're not, if you don't have open communication with your staff, if your staff feels stymied, like they don't have input, they don't know how they're doing, they don't have discussions about job performance or hey, good job, or hey, what can I do to make this a better place to work. If you're not having those conversations regularly, then there's a good chance that your staff over time will become devalued, almost feel like they're not respected and definitely will feel like they're not cared for. So it's really important to keep up that communication. I know just about every episode I say, hey, communication is key. But I say that because you know what Communication is key.

Speaker 0: 7:11

It's really important that you communicate with your staff and your staff can communicate with you. That is the beginning of being able to build really healthy, long-term staff members that feel valued, not only in their work but at their compensation and every other area. So, if you are a person that serves on your church team and you are responsible for your staff, those are the three things, the three strategies that I would suggest for you today. Just to conclude, the high level of turnover intention, which is really what we're talking about here among church staff it really should be a wake-up call for us to really take action, and in order to do that, we need to communicate, we need to understand the factors and we need to contribute to the solutions in this as well. Maybe you're like Todd I'm not in charge of the staff. I'm the staff member that's thinking about leaving.

Speaker 0: 8:05

Stay tuned on the podcast. We're going to be talking about that a little bit later this week as well about how do you determine if you're in that 40% or you're in the 10% that's neutral. How do you determine your future and how do you determine how long to stay where you are? We're going to be talking about that in future editions of the podcast. So I hope you'll stick around for that. Thanks so much for listening. Again, I'm Todd Rhodes. This is the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. Reach out to me anytime you'd like at podcast, at chemistrystandardcom and we are. The survey was supposed to. The assessment was supposed to close last week, but we're keeping it open just for podcast listeners this week. So you have to do it by this Friday. But go ahead and head over to wwwchurchstaffassessmentcom. You can take the free church counseling and staff assessment right there as well. Thanks so much. Talk to you tomorrow.