Employees are the heart and soul of the organisation, they are the lifeblood that keeps the business pumping, so it’s important to make sure that they’re around for your business to thrive.
Life’s a mission and everyone seems to go their own path but that doesn’t mean that your business can’t be a legitimate part of a productive life journey. By implementing proper employee retention techniques, you can save time, money and stress, and benefit from retaining a hard-working and positive workforce into the future.
What is Employee Retention?
This same phenomenon is sometimes known as turnover. Well, exactly what is employee turnover? It’s the rate at which an employee is replaced with a new employee. They may be fired, quit or leave under other circumstances but, how often you can keep an employee is often referred to as the employee retention rate. Large multinational organisations such as restaurant chains have high rates of employee turnover, this is not so bad for them because they have speedy and effective methods of recruitment and training and often hire people who have no interest in furthering their career with them. For businesses who don’t have this luxury, retaining your employees can save you time and money on advertising, recruitment and training while strengthening teamwork, positive aspiration and valuable skills.
1. Be Fair With Salary and Bonuses
Any shortcuts you take in paying employees can come back to bite you in a vicious and more intensive way. Not only that, but it’s seen as the morally upstanding and respectful way of conducting your business, that’s why it is suggested that you be fair with salary and bonuses right from the beginning. This is also a trustworthy method on how to retain employees. Underpaying employees can be more costly than overpaying them sometimes because of multiple reasons. Employees that feel that being paid fairly have no reason to question and investigate their source of income, you. They are comfortable with that part of their working life and are less likely to stray from the business or seek legal action. If an employee decides to leave because of dissatisfying pay, then it is on you to spend money and allocate resources on hiring a new employee, and legal action can be far more expensive and damaging to your business and its reputation. Being fair with salary and bonuses from the outset can help secure a faithful and dedicated workforce and negate ill-effects into the future, preserving your business and its reputation.
2. Hire the Right People, Right From the Start
Measure twice, cut once. That’s an old carpentry proverb which has stood the test of time. Simply put, it means to be accurate before committing to an action. This is to avoid unnecessary mistakes which would require more time and money (on material) repeating an action that could and should have been done right the first time. This saying transfers well to the act of hiring; you save time and money on marketing, interviewing, hiring and training if it’s done right the first time. Let’s explore what the “right people” might mean for your business. Directly relating to staff retention, you should typically hire people that you’d be expecting to stay with the company for at least a few years. This ensures that you will have a consistent set of skilled workers at your disposal. Your competent employees should be able to handle a wide variety of potentially troublesome situations at the micro-level in a professional manner without the need for guidance, allowing you to focus on what is more important in your work. Hiring people that are highly motivated and that you think would fit in with the company is a way of ensuring compatibility, you’d end up using your corporate skills like a matchmaker for the TV show “Married at First Sight”. And they say not to mix business and pleasure… Just for this, it seems.
3. Create a Good Company Culture
For all intents and purposes, culture is the work that brought you here, to begin with. It is the efforts of those that came before you that built what you are in today. Without understanding and being part of it, one is lost. They drift elsewhere and have to scramble for meaningful connection elsewhere which does not always end up well. Having a good company culture can provide meaningful structure to an otherwise unruly and chaotic life which can leave people overwhelmed. It all sounds nice, but what would this look like? For starters, it’s not being greedy with the labour of your employees. Putting pressure on employees to be available around-the-clock is heavily demanding and stressful, and can wear them thin. This should be kept to a minimum and rewarded generously when your employees can pull through for you at such short notice. A good work-life balance for employees should not just be seen as “nice”, but a positive investment into the wellbeing of your company. Giving them a reliable schedule to work around can be like giving them a sturdy backbone which can allow them to grow on a personal level and support the weight of their life. Using time tracking software is a simple way of structuring one’s time management and avoiding having employees work overtime which can add to stress and contribute to bad working culture.
4. Provide Generous Perks
Perks can help set your business apart from the bland masses on the business landscape. When everything looks the same, what’s going to make someone desire to go and see you? A single rose amongst a set of dry twigs is going to stand out and draw the attention and creative ambitions of the viewer. Not only that, but it can communicate the values of your business to any potential employees. Your display of company culture through your perks can bring about those with similar values and ambition. Before you’ve done anything for prospective employees, you’re implementing key retention strategies for employers. Do you value and want to encourage prospective families? Paid paternal/maternal leave can help illustrate this. Do you want to lessen the rigidity of the corporate setting? Have a smart casual dress code or incorporate other ways in which you can make the environment more relaxed or playful. The perks you provide your employees can really personalise the work experience and make your company one that is worth staying with.
5. Provide Fair Opportunities for Promotions
What’s a road trip if before too long, you’ve reached a dead end? It’s a lot of backtracking to end up going anywhere meaningful. It’s not unusual for people to see their life as a journey and with that in mind how can a business cater to this desire for reaching frontiers? Providing fair opportunities for promotions can show an employee a path for growth, an indication that yes, there is a future with this company. A big reason for many workers leaving their job is because they’ve come to the conclusion that they’ve gotten as far as they could in the business, so they look elsewhere and leave to find what they perceive to be better opportunities. Knowing that you can climb the rungs to the ladder of success providespakn employees with justified ambition, and the business has a method on how to improve employee morale and job satisfaction. Keep an eye out on how to inform employees of how they can further themselves as a part of your business.
6. Install Flexible Working Arrangements
Technology has accounted for many revolutionary new ways that we can work today. In the modern day there is an increasing amount of employees that work from home. It can save money on transport, food, hiring out a workspace and more. Plus it can allow employees to maintain a better work-life balance. This is definitely not suited for every business, because different jobs have different requirements and needs. However, giving employees options or informing them of acceptable flexible working arrangements can prove to be mutually beneficial. It can be good to allow employees to come into the office at the time they wish. It can save you money on resources that you provide in the office because employees will operate with more autonomy. They can be more justifiably more self sustaining because they will have more control over how they work. They are more free to grow and produce work that is more inspired when these flexible work arrangements are implemented successfully.
7. Provide Opportunities for Employee Development & Training
Especially with the growing phenomenon of ‘smart boredom’, people nowadays are being more professional with their time. They’re listening to podcasts during their commute, they’re browsing their phone to stay up with current events or fashionable trends. What used to be considered downtime is being transformed into ways that people can be more productive. With so much emphasis on self-improvement nowadays, it’s important for employees to be learning all the time. Providing opportunities for employee development and training can help sate this societal appetite and incentivise employees to stay working for your business. The stimulation that this provides encourages the individual to give their best efforts as they perceive themselves as no longer limited to a small, confined part of the job. The result of this being that they can navigate the working landscape with more proficiency, better transfer their skills to different aspects, and are more valuable as workers and therefore as human beings.
8. Have a Recognition and Rewards System
Encouragement should not be limited to those who are simply loud enough to ask for it. It’s a wondrous thing to see those around transform into better versions of themselves. It has the possibility to uplift the individual and those around them in the opposite manner to how a plague can destroy. A successful recognition and rewards system is the idea of a work-related strategy to recognise the effort put in by the employee and celebrate their achievements. This ideally encourages them to be a continually better version of themselves and inspires them to share it with others. Obvious as it may seem, sometimes even positive things may need permission to flourish. These systems may take the form of bonuses, profit sharing, written or verbal praise, or celebrating milestones. A workplace that fosters positive ambition rather than shunning it is an instantly more appealing place to work and can prove effective towards employee retention.