The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
We're all about helping create a healthy, positive, and spiritually positive environment for church staff members and leadership teams.
The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
The 3-5 Year Wall: Why Your Best Staff Leave Just When They're Getting Good
In this episode of the Healthy Church Staff Podcast, Todd Rhoades discusses the findings from a church staff health assessment, focusing on discovery number two: the health and retention risks of staff in their third to fifth years of tenure. The assessment reveals that while new staff members are generally the healthiest and least likely to leave, there is a significant increase in 'flight risk' during years three to five. This period is crucial as staff members are most valuable but also most likely to consider leaving due to accumulated frustrations. Strategies for mitigating this risk include identifying and addressing staff members' unresolved frustrations to promote long-term retention and health.• New staff members are the healthiest with a low flight risk during their first year.• Flight risk increases significantly in years three to five, rising to 59%.• Year three to five is identified as the 'wall' where accumulated frustrations lead to potential departures.• Surviving the three to five year period results in more commitment and lower flight risk in the long term.• Leadership should focus on mitigating frustrations and facilitating conversations to retain valuable staff.
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Hi there, welcome to the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. My name is Todd Rhodes, one of the co-founders overcomechurchstaffing.com, and your host right here on the podcast. And today is day two in a 10-part series that we're doing here on the podcast to unpack our top 10 discoveries that we just released yesterday from our church staff health assessment. Here's the rundown. Over the last three years, over 3,400 church staff members across the country have taken this assessment, 50 questions. So these aren't guesses, these are actually trends that are backed by real data by people just like you that took the assessment. And today we're going to look at discovery number two, which I think is probably one of the most actionable findings in the entire report. All right, so here we go. The newest staff members are your healthiest. Let me repeat that. That's discovery number two. Your newest staff members are your healthiest. Year one overall health scores came in for church staff in their first year of tenure, about 193. Flight risk only about 32%. Sounds like good news until you see what happens next. So in years three to five, that score of 193 drops 17 points. And the flight risk goes from 32% up to 59%. Now, what does flight risk? Flight risk is how we describe the potential that someone will leave your church staff. And it goes up to almost 60% in years three through five. And that's the cruel irony of that is that's exactly when you need those people to stick around because that's when they're the most valuable to you. Okay, so let me unpack insight number one. There's a predictable life cycle that nobody is talking about. And here's what it is you're and if you've been in ministry, you've experienced this, right? Chances are you have. Roughly. Year one is the honeymoon, right? Everything's fresh, everything's new. You as a staff member, you get the benefit of the doubt, and things are going really well. Your flight risk by the time the first year is over, whether or not you you feel like this is going to be the place where you're going to be, about one and three, 32% is a flight risk. Years two to three, it goes up to about 44%. And year one and two, after that first honeymoon period, is the time of adjustment, right? The reality sets in. You get your first budget disappointment, you fight the uh the we've always done it this way crowd. So that is year two, one to two, and then year three to five, which is what we're talking about. That's what we're calling the wall. That's the crisis point. 59%, it goes up from 44% flight risk up to about 59%, nearly six and ten staff members during years three to five tell us that they have been thinking about leaving. And then in year six to ten, the recovery begins if you last that long, if they survive. In years 16 to 20, that's really where you get all the joy that they had back in year one. It takes, yeah, literally sometimes 10, 15 years to get that honeymoon period back. So the question really shifts from how do I succeed here to should I even be here? And let's talk about why this wall happens, okay? A lot of times it's because by the time you get to year three, four, year five, you have these kind of frustration, these accumulated frustrations. And all of a sudden, it might have been one or two becomes three or four or eight or ten or whatever. And those accumulated frustrations start to hit that critical mask. And year one dysfunction is just a minor irritation, but by year four, sometimes it can get to be a pattern. And those unmet expectations crystallize into resentment. Remember what they promised you that they were going to do in the interview? Um, year three, four, and five, you're like, I don't, I'm not sure if that's really true or not. So, what does this mean for churches? Particularly if you're a pastor, an executive pastor, and you're leading your staff. Here's what it means: you're at risk of losing people at year three to five, which is again, put it in business terms, the maximum return on investment, right? You've invested in your staff, you've built into them, you made them feel at home for the first three years, year three, four, and five. If they're thinking about leaving, that's when they get to that's when they know you. That's when they know your church, that's where hopefully they're starting to fit in and that rhythm and cycles are starting to go. So just think for a second, what a four-year, a year four staff member brings. They know your culture. Hopefully, they've built trust with your people. They've learned from some of those early mistakes, hopefully, and they carry some of that institutional knowledge that if you go out and hire somebody brand new, it's going to take them another three years to get that. They're finally operating at full capacity. And statistically, nearly 60% are considering doing something else. You invested years developing them, and you're losing them right when it starts to pay off. Here's the insight number four I want to give you on this one, this discovery today. The survivors, those that make it through years three, four, and five, those become your best people. They just do. And that's the hope that's really buried in the data as we looked at it this year. The staff who break through that wall don't just stabilize, they recover. And if they last there for 10, 15, 16, 20 years, their scores start to skyrocket, almost identical to that honeymoon that first year period. And the flight risk drops to below 50%, lowest of any tenure band after year one. And if you can help them break through that three to five year wall instead of burning out, they can become your healthiest and your most committed team members. The goal just isn't retention, it's getting them onto the other side so that they can be long-term, not only healthy staff members for your church, but that they can be individually and their families can be long-term healthy in their situation. All right, so here's the bottom line for today. That three to five year window is where you win or you lose your best people. Not your newest hire, not your veterans, the ones in the middle been there, who've seen behind the curtain, who haven't fully committed to staying at the three, four, and five year period, and they're trying to figure out if they're gonna stay or if they're gonna leave. So what should you do? What should you do? If you're in charge of a staff and you've got multiple people that are in that three, four, five year stage, first thing is just identify them, right? If you've got a large enough staff, you need to identify every staff member that's currently in year three, year four, year five, write down their names and schedule a conversation with them, not about performance, but about their experience. And ask them, hey, what frustration have you mentioned multiple times that's still unresolved? In other words, what have you mentioned, or maybe some things that you haven't mentioned, that are frustrating to you that you had hoped we would have fixed by now, but we haven't. And then here's the action step. This one might hurt a little bit. Fix something. One little thing. Show them that change is possible right here at your church. Okay. So this is just this is discovery number two. We've got 10 that we're gonna go through in the next four days left in our series. This is just one of 10 discoveries from our church staff health assessment, and we've compiled all of these discoveries, including all of this data, into a free 200-page report. That's right, it's 200 pages. If you're a church data geek, you're gonna love this. All the data, all the trends, all the practical insights, it's available for you to download right now for free at churchstaffhealth.com. And also this year, just an exciting note, if you're interested, we also have added some individualized reports. So if you took the assessment and want to see specifically how you do compared to everybody else that took the assessment this year, there's a report there available that you can purchase. And then if you're in charge of your staff, maybe you're the senior pastor or the executive pastor, and you're like, this is really helpful information, but I wonder how my staff, I wonder how our staff compare nationally. There's a church-wide report that you can check out, all the information on that as well at churchstaffhealth.com. Remember, this is the discovery for today. The staff in years three to five are your biggest risk, but they're also your biggest opportunity. I'd love to hear any feedback you have. Download the free report. I'd love to hear your comments, your feedback, positive, negative, constructive criticism. I'd love it. And you can reach out to me anytime, podcast at chemistry staffing.com. All right, that's it for today. Hope you'll join me again tomorrow. We'll have discovery number three. I mean, I gotta tell you what it is. You have to come back and listen tomorrow.
