According to research from the Boston Consulting Group, up to 95 percent of companies are losing money due to poor employee retention. This represents a significant financial loss for businesses and a significant loss for the individuals who are leaving their jobs. In most cases, employee retention is a very expensive venture. It’s not just the wages you have to pay, but also the additional training costs and recruitment costs. First of all, if an employee is still working for you after a certain period, he/she is most likely worth keeping on board. After all, employees with a proven track record are worth keeping, right? Moreover, they often contribute a lot more to your company. So what are some strategies that you can use to keep your talent from leaving?
Start At The Beginning
The process of retaining your best staff starts at the beginning of the interview. You should ensure that you set expectations and that all potential employees understand what they are signing up for. On top of this, your human resources department should be taught what to look for when screening resumes. One clear sign that they can watch out for, is the longevity of an applicant’s previous employment. If they can see that the individual has jumped from one place to another, then this should be a warning sign to either dig deep or reject. Nevertheless, you must research each person well so that you don’t miss out on a potentially great employee.
Provide Opportunities to Climb The Ladder
Employees start to leave once they believe that there is no prospect to advance their career and for good reason. Nobody wants to stay in the same position forever or watch as coworkers advance ahead of them over the years. If you are clear and upfront with the positions available and include regular pay rises, you will find that your staff is happier to stay the course. One way to do this could be to engage in regular, anonymous satisfaction surveys that they can fill out and return. You will see the things that they are most unhappy about. However, ensure that these are not too intrusive or too many as they might end up deemed to be a waste of time by those filling them out.
Prioritize Education
This suggestion follows the previous point in that you must always provide opportunities for your staff to get the relevant education that they need in order to progress. This could be management skills, training on new technology or even preparation for a new product about to be launched. The key point is that by investing in education, your staff will feel part of the team and appreciate the extra effort that you are putting into advancing their careers.
Incentive With The Right advantages
The perk of the job is a popular saying for good reason. Everyone needs a little extra to make the hours of work more manageable and exciting. There are certain advantages that many employees look for, including healthcare, dental and other things like company car usage and so on. Depending on the type of business you are in, you could even offer other types of benefits such as stock options in the company for exceptional employees. This will bring people closer together and make them feel like the more that they contribute, the more they will get back, which is true in the case of company shares.
You Technology To Improve Their Workflow
Sometimes employees can feel like they could be doing a better job but are overburdened doing legacy tasks. For example, a lot of time is usually wasted in offices due to filing paperwork and then manually trying to find documents that are needed. If you were to invest in digital archiving, this time would be dramatically reduced. You will not only make your employees happier by giving them less manual work, but you could even boost profitability. Technology can be leveraged for numerous, labor-intensive tasks and also means that you will have something to train your staff on as per the third point.
Retention is critical to a company’s success. While monitoring and managing employee attendance and engagement is a major focus for HR teams, there are a number of ways to improve retention practices. These can range from simple incentives to investing in brand-new technologies. Whatever you decide to do, you will benefit greatly from having your key staff stay with you for longer.
