The retention of employees is one of the important factors for any company to be successful. Over the past eighteen months, an increasing number of people from a wide array of industries have encountered a mass exit in their workplace. The mass exit has been widely attributed to low pay, lack of promotion opportunities, work-life balance dissatisfaction with management or the company as a whole, etc.
12 Effective Employee Retention Strategies
Nowadays, employees are deciding what is best for them, and employers are redefining the things that make their company a place worth working for. If you feel your business might be vulnerable to top talent fleeing or has already started losing prized employees to great resignation, you may want to think about some employee retention strategies. Here are 13 effective strategies to help keep great minds in your organization.
1. Provide Good Base Salaries or Hourly Wages
The most important thing you can do to help employees feel like the work they are performing is worthwhile is to offer a wage commensurate with their sacrifices and effort. Compensation matters far more than any other above condition; if you pay employees enough to justify the time commitment, and they are happy with their salary, then you will be able to retain them.
2. Allow Your Employees to Work from Home
Getting a work-life balance is one of the major benefits of remote working. Research has highlighted that remote workers who walk from home experience an effective and work–balanced life. There are lower levels of stress and higher satisfaction with this freedom to juggle work obligations alongside personal ambitions. It allows employees to build their schedules which helps them balance family and personal time.
Additionally, working from home can promote better mental health in a few ways. A survey conducted by Mind Share Partners found that 67% of remote workers experienced less stress than their in-office colleagues. Being able to craft your workspace contributes to one’s general sense of well-being.
3. Appreciate the Work of Your Employees
Workers are much more apt to stick around and support workplaces over a longer period if they feel recognized and rewarded appropriately, and research also finds those workers work harder and are more engaged when that is the case. However, more than 80 percent of US American workers went on record saying they feel underappreciated. A Brandon Hall Group report shows that organizations with multiple recognition activities per month are 41% more likely to see increased retention and 34% more likely to see increased engagement.
While employee recognition and rewards come in many shapes and forms, it is essential to reward in both social and monetary ways. It is nice to be acknowledged by others, but the benefits of being appreciated publicly are for everyone to see who appreciates what which results in people helping each other based on their work. Offering an employee money, cash alternatives such as gift cards, or even other incentives are some of the most impactful and effective rewards you can give to an employee. Also, you can try to ask some open questions about what your employees like as rewards.
4. Build Employee Engagement
Engagement is one of the major areas to plan how retention drives for our employees. A disengaged employee will experience lower morale, and by extension be less productive which will drag your company down as a whole. Make sure your employees feel heard and their opinions are valuable by giving them a voice.
Similarly, avoid creating artificial engagement, or selling activities that build engagement with no goal or solution. Workers who already secure their job you pay them to do and are not interested in partaking in any extracurricular, being made to participate in social or other types of activities (that are not work-related) can make your workers want to leave. Every workplace is unique and not every workplace needs the same kind of employee engagement – one way to avoid this problem is simply to ask your employees how they would like to be engaged.
5. Create Emphasis on Teamwork
One of the key parts of employee retention in some environments is creating a strong emphasis on teamwork. Creating chances for collaboration—including interdepartmental collaboration. Collaboration can promote not only teamwork but overall employee engagement. Strong teamwork not only encourages bonding between coworkers, which can create a better overall culture, but it also drives higher overall performance. Good teamwork will help managers and employees pair up strengths and weaknesses within departments and more strategically balance the workload.
6. Unison Drive Growth and Development in Professional and Personal Life
A good business knows training is crucial when you onboard new hires and an even better business realizes that continued investment in training and upskilling your employees also has the greatest value if you want to retain your team. By investing time and resources in upskilling your employees, and giving them access to further education and training within their field you make the chances of one of your members walking away less likely, while making them happier and improving your overall company as a result.
7. Manage for Retention
A 2018 report on the Employee Experience by Udemy found nearly 50% of employees quit their jobs because of a bad manager. A good manager, on the other hand, acts not as a “boss” but as a “coach.” The key difference is that while a boss is seen as an unsatisfying source of demand micromanaging every aspect of employees’ work, a coach knows their employees are players on a team. A good employer/coach works to guide employees in the right direction by offering advice, support, and goals while still allowing their workers to have a high degree of autonomy.
8. Know When It Is Time To Say Goodbye
Unfortunately, no amount of strategy will guarantee perfect employee retention. At some point, your employees must move on—either to retire or to find work more suited to what they’re looking for. Knowing when it’s time to say goodbye and handling employee offboarding effectively and well is just as important for overall employee retention as any of these other strategies. The remaining employees should know they will be well taken care of whenever they do move on themselves.
9. Reduce Employee Burnout
A 2020 Gallup report about employee burnout; Causes and Cures. The report found that 76% of employees sometimes experience burnout on the job and 28% stated they feel burnout “often” or “always.” While it is often assumed burnout is caused by overwork and can be solved by taking days off or reducing work hours, Gallup’s study found burnout is more influenced by how employees experience their workload than the literal number of hours they work. Employees who feel more engaged by their work, who are properly recognized and rewarded, and who are offered better job flexibility via reduced hours, remote work, or flexible scheduling report higher well-being.
The Gallup report mentions the top five factors that lead to employee burnout which include:
- Unfair treatment at work
- Unmanageable workload
- Unclear communication from management
- Lack of manager support
- Unreasonable time pressure
10. Give Other Job Perks
While many of the retention strategies on our list this far may be seen as perks of a specific job, job perks can come in several shapes and forms. In addition to offering the basics, such as remote work, flexible schedules, and good healthcare, you can give your employees discounts on things such as cell phone service, travel costs, car rentals, food, and more. AnyPerk.com, CorporatePerks.com, and BenefitHub.com are all similar services, with affordable rates as low as $5 per employee per month, that give your workers great benefits and discounts at national businesses. You can also make connections with local businesses that might be happy to offer discounts on products.
11. Encourage Growth and Offer Professional and Personal Development
A great business recognizes how important training is during the onboarding process of an employee, but a business with strong employee retention also recognizes the value of continuing to invest in training and upskilling employees. Upskilling your employees by investing time and resources and providing them access to additional education and training within their field not only makes them happier and more likely to stay with your company but also makes your company stronger as a whole.
12. Hire for the Cultural Fit
Many people can learn a specific skill or develop certain expertise. But not just anyone fits into an existing team nor shares the cultural values of your employees and your company. Hiring for the cultural fit can ensure long-term employee retention because these new hires will mesh well with the team quicker, making everyone more comfortable and getting productivity back on track faster. Harvard Business Review article mentions bad hiring decisions as one of the top causes of employee loss, with 41% of surveyed employers estimating a single bad hire costing their business $25,000 or more.
Conclusion
As the labor market becomes more saturated, it is now more vital than any other time to focus on employee retention strategies in order to spur organizational success. Therefore, companies are poised to change direction to accord absolute importance to meeting the needs of their employees. The approaches discussed – from wages and working conditions to incentives and training – must also emphasize the value of a positive organizational climate. Therefore, through the encouragement of employee participation, supporting teamwork, and encouraging and investing in the development of the individual and the professional, such businesses will not only be able to retain their human capital but also improve their performance and morale. Additionally, it can be seen that action focused on preventing turnover provides a strong basis for prioritizing loyal employees who will create a valuable and sustainable business in any evolving environment.
