Employee Retention Strategies
Just as it is more cost-effective to retain existing customers rather than acquire new sales, it is similarly far more cost-effective to retain your employees. Employees leaving means you need to pay to advertise their position, pay for the hiring process, the training process, and still not enjoy the same level of technical skill that your previous employee exhibited.
Bad employees are no loss, but when your best employees leave for something better, you know you need to invest in some top employee retention strategies.
Effective Employee Retention Strategies
Employees working for you should be talented, engaged, and hardworking, but it is not only on the employee to be a hard worker. When you improve employees and invest in them and their environment, the best workers have greater reasons to stay with you for years – even decades.
How Do You Retain Employees?
There are multiple methods you can use to retain employees.
1. Hire the Right People Right From the Start
Your potential employees will need to have more than just the right qualifications. You need someone who has the right drive and personality. Building a team is so much more than ensuring the right skills are in play. Work with your current employees to build up a candidate profile that can help you to hire the right person, not just the person with the right skills.
2. Provide Ample Training and Support During the Onboarding Process
Hiring someone and then just leaving them to it is an ineffective management style that provides no direction for success. By creating a better training and onboarding process, you can ease new hires into the role and help them do better at their job.
3. Ensure Your Employees are Engaged in Your Business
Your employees need to feel as if they are more than just a cog in the machine. They need to provide true value to the business for them to be engaged. When an employee sees your success as their success, they work harder and want to be with you as you grow.
4. Provide Great Benefits that They Care About
Benefits are critical and not just for standing out. If you want parents – especially qualified women – to remain working, then you need to help them raise a family and further their career by offering flextime schedules or on-site childcare support.
To provide great benefits like this, you simply need to gain feedback from your employees. Give them benefits that help them enjoy a healthier, more fulfilling life, both in and out of work.
5. Pay Your Employees as Well as You Can Afford
You won’t always be able to pay the most competitive salaries, and that is fine, so long as your employees know you are compensating them for their talents the best you can. When your company grows, ensure their salaries grow too. Let your growth equate to their growth, and you will have employees fighting to help you succeed.
6. Treat Every Employee Equally
Try to reduce favoritism from the start and treat every employee equally. On the other end of the spectrum, work to create a comprehensive anti-discrimination policy so that no one feels disadvantaged, and if they do, they have proper channels to go through to rectify the situation.
7. Encourage Regular Feedback from Employees
Create a feedback loop for your employees. Develop a culture within your workplace that is engaging and creative, where employees feel heard, and their ideas contribute to your future. Encourage this share of ideas – even if it has to do with your management style – and listen. Use their opinions and improve where necessary, and you will create a highly sought-after working environment.
8. Provide Training and Development Opportunities to All of Your Employees
Let employees better themselves and their skills by offering training opportunities. This could be shadowing shifts, or you could pay for online courses and subscriptions. There are so many resources available today to help your employees grow.
9. Incorporate Stay Interviews into Your Strategy
Exit interviews should be second to stay interviews. See what you can do to keep your top employees with you, and don’t let this be a last-resort maneuver. When you conduct regular reviews on performance, allow your employees to also provide reviews on your business and management style.
10. Promote a Healthy Work/Life Balance
Encourage employees to live healthily and wok to provide benefits and working conditions that promote a healthy work/life balance. This way, your employees will be at their best and won’t burn out.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is an employee retention plan?
When an employee leaves, they take their experience with them. High employee turnover is, therefore, very expensive for any business and reduces your ability to grow effectively. An employee retention plan is a strategy devised to keep your best employees.
This can be done through multiple strategies like the ones mentioned above, but first and foremost, you will want to gain feedback from your existing staff on what needs to change ASAP.
How important is employee retention for an organization?
Great employees are invaluable to a business, but when an employee knows their value, they are going to want to work for a company that helps them enjoy a healthy work life balance. They work harder, are more talented, and know your business inside out.
What are some innovative ways to reduce employee turnover?
Improving the work environment, offering flexible schedules, and more are all ways that you can reduce employee turnover. When in doubt, gain feedback and suggestions from your employees themselves.
How does a startup retain its employees?
Startups cannot offer employees the same careers paths that established businesses can, but they can still provide team members with more responsibility. Offering greater responsibility will entice great talent to your business as it means your growth is their growth.
What kinds of businesses have high employee turnover rates?
Businesses with high turnover rates are those that have poor employee engagement. Every business can have a thriving culture that encourages employees to stay, but you need to know what your employees want to provide this.
How much is employee turnover really costing you?
A pain point is a specific problem in your business. There could be a pain point in your company culture that is resulting in high turnover rates. For every employee lost, you can expect a loss of 6 to 9 months of that employees’ salary. For managers, this could result in tens of thousands in lost revenue and productivity.
How do companies inspire employees?
The right retention strategies can help employers inspire their employees. This could be by offering the right benefits or the right opportunities. When an employee feels as though they have a future with you, they will want to stay with you.
What is employee engagement?
Employee engagement can mean different things, which is why it can be difficult for employers because it’s more than just improving employee happiness. To start with, improve the onboarding process so that your employees know what their role is and how the company works. Engage them further by listening to their ideas, encouraging dialogue between employees, and requesting feedback on your business. An employee needs to feel vital to feel engaged.
Why is team building important?
An employee is never just on their own, which is why team building is so important to employee satisfaction. You cannot force people to like each other, but with the right team training programs and working environment, you can help them work well together.