Simple Methods for Employee Retention
Hiring a good employee is challenging, but it’s actually the easier part. Employee retention is the bigger and more consequential challenge. Retaining your top talent is an uphill task, especially in the modern workplace where one in two employees is ready to jump ship.
Additionally, the high employee replacement costs — estimated at 33% of a worker’s salary — and the efficiency gaps triggered by departing workers make employee retention even more important. To avoid or mitigate the pitfalls of employee turnover, consider implementing these clever employee retention tips.
Foster an Inclusive Workplace Culture
An inclusive workplace culture values all employees from different socioeconomic backgrounds, cultures, races, ethnicities, and sexual orientations. In an inclusive workplace, all workers are treated equally and granted the same tools and opportunities to succeed.
Initiating diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) measures is the common pathway most companies follow to make their workplace inclusive. And it’s the right thing to do, given that 53% of workers say promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace is a positive thing.
By encouraging DEI, you’ll create a talent-friendly work environment that gives every worker an equal chance to grow and thrive regardless of background. Talented employees prefer an inclusive workplace with the best chance of success.
Train Your Managers to Be Effective Leaders
According to a 2022 McKinsey survey, uninspiring and uncaring leaders are a big reason many workers quit. These results support the popular opinion that people leave their bosses, not their jobs. Training your manager is the most effective way to mitigate employee attrition caused by bad leadership.
Consider establishing an in-house manager training program that all your supervisors must attend. Such a program should ingrain core leadership values to your supervisors, empowering them to manage your workforce fairly and effectively.
As the business owner, you’re uniquely positioned to determine the ideal leadership culture that suits your company because you know your customers, employees, and work processes best. As such, spearhead your initial manager training programs until your preferred leadership style and values are deeply entrenched among your management team.
Offer Employees Competitive Compensation and Benefits Packages
According to a 2022 Statista survey, low pay was the top reason most workers cited for leaving their jobs. Modern workers love non-monetary incentives like inclusivity and work-life balance. But they’re equally, if not more, concerned about remuneration.
The speedy adoption of pay transparency laws across states has further fueled this trend. States such as California, Maryland, Connecticut, and Colorado require employers to include compensation details in job postings. Employees who want better pay can easily apply to such positions or use the information to negotiate for better pay at their current jobs.
Thus, if you don’t offer your top workers a competitive salary, you’ll make it easy for other companies to poach them. If you don’t have the resources to provide immediate pay hikes, consider upgrading your long-term benefits packages. For instance, offering a better retirement plan can be enough to convince a restless employee not to jump ship.
Celebrate Top Performers and Team Effort
Employees are the lifeblood of your small business. Passionate and dedicated workers help scale your business to unprecedented levels. On the other hand, apathetic employees will do just enough to keep their jobs. You need an objective employee recognition system to reward and celebrate workers and teams who do more than the bare minimum to see the business excel.
Recognize individual employees for exceptional personal performance and teams that achieve remarkable milestones in crucial projects. The goal is to declare gratitude and encourage your top workers and teams to keep at it. Some employee recognition ideas you can pursue include:
- Increasing paid time off
- Providing customized gifts
- Organizing team-building activities
- Celebrating achievement publicly on Slack, Email, and other official communication channels
- Providing timely feedback to teams or individuals to encourage performance
Even modest but well-intentioned recognition gestures can revitalize employees and increase their loyalty and engagement to your company’s vision and long-term goals.
Embrace Flexible Work Arrangements to Promote Work-Life Balance
Work flexibility is one of the most sought-after perks in the modern workplace. A Deloitte marketplace survey found that 94% of U.S. professionals benefit from work flexibility in two primary ways:
- Better mental health
- Better work-life balance
Adopting flexible work policies makes your small business more attractive to top professionals seeking more work autonomy. You may have fully remote policies or hybrid work arrangements if your business activities allow.
Regardless of your preferred work arrangement, the central idea should be granting workers more autonomy. You may allow workers to choose when, where, and how to complete job tasks if they maintain or enhance efficiency.
Job autonomy is precious to top performers who continually pursue operational efficiency.
Invest in Employee Training and Development
Career progression is a major goal for talented and ambitious workers. It’s so critical that 41% of global professionals in the U.K., Australia, India, Singapore, Canada, and the U.S. cited lack of career advancement as the main reason they quit a job in 2022.
Availing training and development opportunities for your workers is an excellent way of supporting their career progression. You can do this by:
- Sponsoring workers to attend critical industry-specific seminars
- Organizing re-skilling and up-skilling training courses
- Supporting professional development classes
- Providing job shadowing opportunities
- Following an internal promotion system
Even if you can’t guarantee all your workers career progression opportunities, support them in advancing their professional skills and knowledge. This shows them you care about their career ambitions and not only growing your business. In turn, it makes them more loyal to your company.
Advanced training also empowers them to perform better and boosts your business’s productivity — a win-win for you two.
Conduct Stay Interviews Bi-Annually
Stay interviews are conversations with top-performing employees to discover what they like and dislike in their roles. It also covers what you can do to enhance their performance. This give you an excellent chance to uncover existing pain points your workers are experiencing and brainstorm prompt solutions.
Ideally, you should conduct stay interviews within six months after a performance appraisal. The sooner you conduct stay interviews after a performance review, the faster you’ll implement changes and boost your employees’ morale.
Conducting regular stay interviews gives you the insights you need to build a near-perfect work environment for your employees and increase retention.
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