How to Stop Your Employees From Walking
One of the most valuable assets of any organisation is its employees. So, it makes a lot of sense to aim for a high employee retention rate, especially if you consider the time and money you need to invest in hiring and training new employees.
But a lot of companies are struggling to hold on to their employees. No matter what they do, they can’t seem to retain their employees, and the result is a high employee turnover.
There are many reasons for this. If your employees feel undervalued, they are likely to leave your organisation and move to another company where they feel more appreciated and adequately rewarded.
Also, it’s difficult to retain top talent in a highly competitive industry, since your competitors are happy to snatch good employees from yours. So, if you’re not doing your best to retain your employees, you’ll find that other companies hiring them right under your nose.
Here we describe the key ways to boost your employee retention, and prevent your top talent from leaving prematurely:
Build a great business culture
Create a strong company culture and find employees that resonate with this culture. Look for employees that are comfortable with your business environment.
Whether you decide to go for a formal workplace or a more relaxed atmosphere, you need to find the right people who are comfortable with your way of running the business.
Try to be transparent and let your workers know about the company strategy, and where the organisation is headed. Also, appreciate those that work hard and let them know that you value the work they are doing for you.
Look for the right people
Don’t cut corners during your hiring process. Make sure you pay close attention to the values and the motivation of the candidates you interview. That will help to filter out job hoppers, and those who haven’t gone to the trouble of properly researching the background of your company.
Instead, try to find people who are serious, and want to join your company for the right reasons.
Provide a clear job description
Good communication with your workforce is critical for employee retention. Make sure that all employees are aware of their role in your company, and let them know they are expected to work in line with that.
Employees feel insecure if they don’t understand their role in your business. They will likely seek employment in other organisations if you don’t give them a proper job description.
One option is to create a job plan for every staff member. You should also organise regular assessments, and provide feedback on their performance.
Provide training
When you spend time and resources on training employees, the result is loyalty and a higher degree of retention. A lot of companies talk about the benefits of employee training but do very little to actually train their workforce.
There are many ways to do this. You could provide them with credits to online learning centres, or hire trainers to run in-house courses. The details are up to you, but you should definitely do something to further employee development, and as a result, your retention rate will jump to a higher level.
Offer flexible working conditions
When you create flexible conditions for your workers, they are likely to prefer your organisation compared to others with stricter conditions. One way to do this is to ask them to deliver results, rather than insisting on strict schedules and maintaining rigid work hours.
Pay a good salary
It can be difficult to pay fat salaries on a limited budget. But if you calculate how much it will cost you to constantly replace your workers, you’ll find that paying them well is cheaper.
On average, it can take as much as 30% to 50% of the yearly salary of an employee in order to replace them adequately and rapidly. So, if it’s easy for your employees to gain a higher salary by moving to the competition, you’ll end up spending a lot of money on constant recruitment and training.
Don’t waste too much time on employees that aren’t a good fit
Often managers spend a lot of time working with employees who aren’t doing well, thereby ignoring the competent ones. But if you spend too much time on people who are struggling, you’re not devoting enough time promoting the highly talented and motivated workers.
While it’s definitely good to do both, you should spend more effort on working with and retaining your top talent.
Provide great benefits
Benefits have a strong effect on employee retention, and also affect your company’s ability to attract new talent.
However, it can be difficult for small businesses to keep up with large companies in terms of the benefits they offer their workforce.
So, it might be necessary to be more creative, and come up with attractive benefits that you can afford. For example, you could offer flexible work hours, or the ability to work from home under certain conditions.
Conclusion
It doesn’t have to be hard to improve your employee retention rate. If you succeed in building a strong connection with your workforce, you’ll get to know them well, and as a result, you’ll understand how to keep them working for you.
Finally, make continuous efforts to assess your strategies and policies for employee retention, and analyse how well you are doing.
Compare your salary and benefits with other companies, and assess your organisational culture and your relationship with your workforce. Doing this well is the foundation for a great employee retention rate.
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