Looking to improve cash flow, boost productivity, and enhance customer satisfaction? Then there’s arguably no strategy better equipped for delivering all of those things than working to improve your employee retention rate.
Companies that have high employee retention rates typically outperform those that are always chopping and changing their teams, and that’s no accident. After all, high retention rates suggest that the team is happy, working well, and getting results, which are all things that any ambitious business wants to see.
In this post, we’ll run through a few proven strategies for nudging your employee retention numbers in the right direction. Take all of the tips on board, and it won’t be long before your business begins to experience the many benefits that good employee retention rates can provide.
Hire the Right Person
Want to avoid having to replace a recruit within a matter of months? Then make sure that you’re hiring the right person in the first place. Hiring the wrong person makes it inevitable that they’ll be out the door prematurely.
There’s no way to guarantee that you always hire the right person; there will always be a few ill-placements that fall through the cracks. The goal isn’t to perfect the hiring process, but simply to increase your odds of landing a winner. In many cases, you’ll find that you can hire the right person simply by looking beyond the resume and seeing how — or even if — they’ll fit into your company as a whole. This page offers some useful tips for assessing that fit.
Support Your HR Team
A company’s HR team plays a critical role in the overall employee retention rate, yet you’d be surprised at how many businesses treat their HR teams as entirely self-sufficient departments. While your HR team can boost your employee retention rate, they’ll need your support to make it happen. Being open to their ideas, providing them with talent management system software and other essential HR tools, and involving them in the business’s strategic decisions will all help your HR team to do their jobs more effectively. Remember — when HR can work well, employees tend to have a better experience, and that normally translates to much better retention.
Train Your Leaders
Did you know that seven out of ten employees say they would quit if they had a bad manager? That’s a pretty drastic impact that a single employee — the manager — can have on an organization.
You can’t expect every employee to love their manager, but you can at least give them a reason not to hate their manager, and the way you do that is to train your managers on how to be good leaders. If they’re doing everything correctly, then not only will you decrease the number of employees who want to leave because of their manager, but you may even foster additional loyalty. Employees are much more likely to stick it out when the going gets tough if they’re working for a manager whom they admire.
Put Together a Great Office
Employees care about more than what they do for work. They care where they do it. Having an aesthetically pleasing, inspiring office can do wonders for improving recruitment and keeping employees onside. After all, people want to spend their working hours in a nice environment if possible.
You don’t need to go overboard to create the coolest office on the planet (though feel free if budget allows!). Even small office changes, such as adding some color to the walls, adding plants, and boosting the amount of natural light that passes into the office, can make a big difference. These improvements should also offer the bonus of boosting employee productivity as well as retention.
Team Bonding
It’s much more enjoyable to go to the office when you know there will be some friendly faces waiting for you when you arrive. On the flip side, knowing that you’re walking into a sea of disconnected strangers can take its toll, and fast.
One handy, effective way to gently guide your employee retention rate in the right direction is to provide the time and space that your employees need to get to know one another. After work drinks, days out, and having a social part of the office, such as a coffee corner, can all do wonders for helping your employees become friends.
Pay Well — and Periodically Increase
Given its importance, we perhaps should have put this point at the top of the list. As we all know, money talks. If you want your team to stay in place, then there’s no strategy more effective than simply paying them well. A good salary is enough to make up for all manner of other shortcomings.
Of course, you can’t just throw money at your team. You’ve got a business to run, after all. Making sure that your salaries are competitive and that you periodically offer pay increases can prevent your employees from casting their eyes around in search of more lucrative roles. It’s not about paying the earth; just paying a reasonable, fair salary.
Provide a Pathway for Growth
The best employees want to feel like they’re moving forward, and if they’re not getting that pathway from you, then they’ll find a company that can give them what they’re looking for. Paying for courses and allowing them to grow is a handy strategy for maintaining engagement.
Hear their Feedback
Finally, remember that while you can come up with lots of ideas about how to improve the employee experience, the ones who will know what they want/need to be happy are…the employees themselves. Being open to feedback and making your employees part of the process that influences their experience is an effective, comically easy way to keep them on board. Employees value this approach because it not only gives them some of what they want/need but also shows that the company they’re working for is happy to listen to them, and you’d be surprised at how rare that is.
