Employee retention represents your ability to keep your workers under contract, thus creating a more stable and efficient workforce. Reducing turnover has always been a high priority for companies due to the fact that it increases productivity, accelerates growth and success, and reduces overall costs. But ever since the pandemic, an increasing number of employees are deciding to leave their jobs, presenting a critical need for businesses to hold on to top talent. If this is one of your main concerns as well, here are some valuable strategies you can use to improve employee retention:
-
Begin with recruiting
Retention can start at the very beginning, during the application and screening processes. If you look at recruiting as a long game, you can take the necessary steps to ensure each candidate you select will be fully engaged with the company’s success. One way to achieve this is to identify certain aspects of your business strategy and company culture you’d like to emphasize, and then find those same qualities in your job applicants. Choosing people who are more likely to stay based on previous experience and commitment to causes can also be of help, as well as selecting employees who are more aligned with your mission, values, and goals.
-
Provide career opportunities
Personal and professional development is crucial to employee retention. Not only does promoting from within provide a clearer career path that comes with greater responsibility and compensation, but it also makes employees feel more valued and like they’re a vital part of the company’s overall success. Aim to provide opportunities for career development that are suited to each individual, ones that begin with risk and skill assessments and end in further education, additional training, and possible promotions. Learning and growing have to be the main focuses of any strong business, as this commitment is seen by workers as an important investment in their worth and a great incentive to stay with the company.
-
Seek employee feedback
Whether you decide to create polls, hold regular team meetings, or simply have one-on-one conversations with your employees, actively seeking feedback is one of the best ways to learn more about your workers’ needs and perspectives. This information enables you to determine whether you are managing to meet expectations or if you’re falling short, but it won’t be effective if you don’t act on it. When collecting employee feedback, you should listen carefully to all suggestions and complaints, make the necessary adjustments, and implement needed changes. Listening to and obeying feedback will help to build trust and loyalty among your teams while boosting retention in the process.
-
Conduct exit surveys
Feedback can be gathered from employees who decide to leave your company as well. As long as you create an exit survey with the right questions, this tactic can prove to be invaluable. A survey will give you the opportunity to see what encouraged employees to leave, what they didn’t like about their jobs, how satisfied they were with their salaries and benefits, and how valued they felt as employees. It will also provide some insights into the more positive aspects of the job, management, career opportunities, and your overall operations, all of which can be quite important feedback you can use to fix common issues and increase retention in the future.
-
Offer remote work options
Another way to retain your employees is to allow them to work from home; you simply have to prioritize flexibility. The recent pandemic has clearly shown that remote work is possible in the long term, even coming with unique benefits such as increased productivity and better performance. But from a retention perspective, offering more flexibility in terms of location, schedules, and working hours could also raise employee happiness and satisfaction levels. In turn, this can increase retention, and possibly even boost your company’s competitiveness and appeal for attracting top talent as a result.
-
Boost employee engagement
Employees are more likely to leave if you do a poor job of handling and engaging your workforce. To prioritize retention, make sure to boost engagement through effective communication and streamlined collaboration. Talk to your workers regularly to understand any concerns they might have and find ways to address them as soon as possible. Hold meetings that focus on the state of the business on a regular basis, and ensure employees from all teams and departments are invited into these sessions. When employees feel included in processes and appreciated within the organization, they become accountable and engagement is likely to increase, thus boosting retention in the process.
-
Support worker autonomy
According to research, employees who work in a supportive environment that encourages autonomy tend to feel more empowered and engaged as well, thus leading to higher retention. Autonomy in the workplace means giving your workers the liberty to work in a way that’s suitable to them, possibly allowing individuals to make more important decisions on their own also. As this can be a challenging aspect to implement, it might be helpful to follow certain tactics to ensure success, even if you work with freelance writers and digital nomads. For example, you can provide your employees with all the tools they need to perform their jobs optimally, cultivate a culture of trust instead of micromanaging, and schedule regular one-on-ones to discuss concerns, review progress, and celebrate success.
-
Focus on inclusion
It’s no secret that inclusion has a positive effect on productivity, performance, and even employees’ well-being. Inclusion also leads to creativity and innovation, which are key to a company’s success. When working in a more diverse environment, team members can feel higher levels of connectedness and belonging as well, which can significantly affect their engagement. For these reasons, it might be wise to cultivate a more diverse and inclusive work environment through investing in education and training to eliminate biases, building cultural competence to streamline communication and management, and defining strict anti-discrimination policies and procedures.
Employees are key to organizational success, and it’s in the business’s best interests to keep them on board. Focus on employee retention using the advice above and keep your best talent while enhancing the profitability of your company.
About The Author
