The skill and aptitude of product team members has a significant impact on product team performance. But quality is not the only indicator of whether a team is likely to be high performing. The significance of turnovers impact continues to be under-appreciated.
In our previous market research we have identified that effective onboarding, or the absence of a disciplined onboarding process, has a significant impact on whether a team is able to maintain momentum. So this year we decided to take a closer look at job satisfaction and the impact that turnover is actually having on product teams.
How Would You Characterize Your Job Satisfaction?
Overall, those responding to the survey are satisfied with their positions. More than 63% indicate that they are either satisfied (48.3%) or extremely satisfied (14.8%) in their work. An additional 24.6% experience some level of satisfaction with their positions. Only 12.3% responded that they are dissatisfied with their jobs, including 5.1% who are actively looking for employment in another organization.
Having established a job satisfaction baseline let’s take a closer look at the impact that turnover is actually having.
How Would You Characterize The Impact That Personnel Turnover Is Having On Delivering Products To Market?
54% of respondents believe that team turnover has had a moderate to significant impact on their team’s ability to meet commitments and deliver products on time. This percentage includes 16.3% who believe turnover has had a damaging effect on the ability to deliver a quality product on time and 37.7% who feel turnover has moderately affected the team’s ability to deliver expected results.
Conclusion
While the actual rate of turnover is relatively low the impact that turnover has on the product team is disproportionately high. 54% of product teams are experiencing moderate to significant impact to their performance even though only 5% of product team members are actively looking to exit with another 7% passively awaiting their opportunity.
It is clear that maintaining stability on the product team is additive to performance, and as we have demonstrated in earlier research, few organizations (4%) indicate that they have a disciplined way of onboarding new product team members. Sink or swim being the dominant onboarding approach.
Is your product team experiencing turnover, and if so, what has been its impact on your team’s performance?
Advancing the Profession of Product Management™
website I consulting I training I toolkits I books I blog I twitter