For years, employee retention has been a major concern for businesses. There is no one-size-fits-all formula for ensuring that your staff stays with your company indefinitely. Employees may leave their current job due to monotony, a lack of career advancement, new job prospects, better compensation, unhealthy work culture, and various other factors.
What is Employee Retention?
Employee retention refers to the various policies and practices which let the employees stay at an organisation for a longer period. Every company devotes time and resources to grooming new hires, preparing them for the workplace, and bringing them up to speed with existing staff. When people leave their jobs after completing their training, the company is at a loss. Employee retention refers to the many steps taken to ensure that a person stays with a company for as long as possible.
In today’s workplace, simply keeping your employees happy isn’t enough; you also need to retain your talent and keep the best individuals on board for as long as possible. Employers are under a lot of pressure since one out of every three new employees leaves after six months. According to statistics from around the world, Employee attrition and turnover have been exceptionally high in recent years, a testimony to which is the recent GREAT RESIGNATION.
What is the importance of Employee Retention?
Organisations spend a lot of money to hire, develop, and retain talent, and they want to be sure they’re investing in people who will deliver and stay in the business for a long time to create value. Retaining talent is important for:
- It saves a lot of capital otherwise spent on re-hiring and training new talent.
- It improves the corporate work culture and makes it a hundred times better.
- It adds to employee satisfaction which results in better productivity.
- It results in better revenue because of the increase in productivity.
Employee retention methods are useful for ensuring that firms get the most out of their skills. Employee retention strategies are policies and procedures that companies use to prevent employee turnover and attrition, as well as to keep employees engaged and productive over time. The main difficulty for organisations is to ensure that their retention strategy is in line with their company objectives in order to maximize their return on investment.
Here are 10 Employee Retention Strategies that may help to reduce your attrition rate:
- Create a FRIENDLY work environment
We spend the majority of our days at work, and if the environment isn’t friendly, would we ever return to work? The response is a resounding “NO.” More than 80% of employees want to work in a healthy and supportive atmosphere, according to a survey published by Sage Journals. As a result, providing a supportive work environment (SWE) is becoming increasingly crucial to retain bright employees.
A healthy work environment would mean creating a space where peers respect each other, where grievances are heard, where ideas are acknowledged, where rigid hierarchy does not obstruct communication, where diversity and inclusion are a norm, and where employees feel supported and safe.
- LISTEN to your employees
Today, we are so preoccupied with expressing our opinions that we forget to listen to what others have to say. It’s critical to “listen to listen rather than listen to speak” all the time. Employers do not need to take drastic measures to reduce employee turnover; all they need to do is “listen” to their employees and resolve any problems they face on a regular basis. Do not always listen to them as their superiors, but rather as their co-workers and friends.
When the pandemic struck, this lesson was reinforced. Paying attention to what your employees have to say, especially in what is being referred to as the post-pandemic age, will help to develop trust between them and the organisation. Trust is a foundation that will ensure that employees stay with the organisation. Listening to your employees will build a very healthy employee-employer relationship which comes with a host of benefits.
- Provide SKILL DEVELOPMENT programs
One thing the pandemic taught us about employment is that organisations must invest in their employees in order for employees to invest in them in return. It is only normal for employees to seek opportunities to advance in their professions and take on more demanding jobs. Employers who can contribute to this aspiration may be able to keep their finest employees.
According to a LinkedIn survey, providing development and training programs for upskilling is a big contributor to establishing a well-rounded employee experience. As a result, 77% of organisations focus on employee experience to enhance retention. The same survey backs up the fact that 94 percent of talent professionals believe that employee experience will be a big contributor to higher retention rates in the future and that it is thus critical to consider in recruiting and HR.
- Care about their WELLBEING and MENTAL HEALTH
Following the pandemic, mental health has been a prominent topic of concern in the majority of HR talks and discussions. Prioritizing well-being has become imperative for HR professionals in all their employee-related initiatives.
Employers might provide paid time off, monetary benefits, and other perks for employee wellbeing. Many companies are coming up with innovative ways to support their staff as they adjust to the new work environment. Since HR leaders recognize that employee fatigue is destroying sabotaging staff retention and contributing to 50% turnover, employers will be expected to ensure a work-life balance for their employees. As a result, mental health and well-being activities will be a prominent emphasis of employee retention tactics in 2022.
- Enable FLEXIBILITY at work
You may not be entirely correct if you believe that the hybrid or remote work paradigm will become the new standard. Although most organisations are providing a flexible work model, there are many that cannot function online such as the manufacturing sector. As a result, businesses must carefully consider the demands and requirements of various work environments, as well as provide flexibility in terms of work hours, days, and other factors.
Employers will have to embrace the new credo of “work from anywhere and anytime” to retain their best talent. In fact, one of the most common reasons for people quitting during the GREAT RESIGNATION was inflexibility. Flexibility is a business driver, according to a Statista survey, which found that 89% of organisations report higher retention rates due to their flexible work alternatives.
- Hire RIGHT
“Hire RIGHT” means not just recruiting the right people, but also having the right hiring strategy.
Organisations invest a lot of money when hiring talent, and if that talent isn’t kept, the investment is simply wasted. Hire the proper individual for the correct role to avoid such a predicament in the first place. This implies employing someone who knows what the job entails, has previous work experience in the field, and appears to be enthusiastic about it. According to a Glassdoor survey, more than one-third of hiring managers believe that if new recruits were properly informed during the hiring process, retention rates would skyrocket. Hence, layout all the job requirements clearly and transparently.
- Build a culture of continuous FEEDBACK
An employee with a growth mindset is continuously seeking methods to better understand where they may develop in order to advance faster in their profession. All-rounded feedback, often known as 360-degree feedback, can encourage employees to work better and hence stay with the company.
You should stay in touch with your staff by soliciting feedback and suggestions on a frequent basis. Some people found it difficult to separate their professional and personal lives after COVID 19, and some employees experienced loneliness, concern, and stress at work. In these circumstances, being able to empathize with your employees allows you to have a better sense of their pulse and develop stronger plans for their well-being.
- APPRECIATE and REWARD
Organisations can offer monetary rewards such as bonuses and pay raises, as well as non-monetary benefits such as recognition and appreciation. According to Forbes, roughly 6 out of 10 employees consider a company’s benefits package to be the most important non-salary aspect when evaluating and continuing a job.
Stepping into the future, for organisations to increase their retention rates, it will be critical to congratulate the employees on their accomplishments by awarding them. Most firms are turning to powerful HRMS solutions to construct customized R&R plans with ease and accuracy.
- Encourage OPEN COMMUNICATION
Open Communication at the workplace fosters an environment where employees feel safe to voice their ideas and opinions. It promotes transparency, which encourages your employees to have faith in their supervisors and employers.
If you want to help your employees succeed, communicate with them on a regular basis and inquire about the project they’re working on and what you can do to help them finish it. You must be eager to share your knowledge and mentor and guide others. An employer’s constant motivation should be to guarantee that all critical decisions, policy changes, and other communications reach every employee. This makes the employee feel more involved, and when employee engagement is high, employee retention is high.
- Harness the power of DATA
It is fascinating to observe how data may aid with talent retention. Data and numbers may not be able to directly assist, but they do provide various benefits in the long run. Availability of large amounts of data via the modern HRMS platforms is useful in assisting businesses and addressing important questions about their workforce and its requirements.
HRMS platforms have proven extremely helpful to reduce attrition at the workplace.
New technology and novel techniques to locate and manage employees, as well as digital collaboration platforms and new data collection methods, are changing how organisations will build their workforces in the future. Recruiting within the company before looking for talent outside is a creative strategy that hiring managers can use to retain talent. This can significantly cut costs and according to some statistics, internal hires receive higher performance reviews compared to a counterpart hired from outside.
Conclusion
The loss of talent is one of the most expensive expenditures a company can incur today. The value of talent may be shown in the fact that a single employee’s departure can cost a company up to 250 percent of their annual salary, disregarding miscellaneous costs such as lost productivity, reduced engagement, and cultural ramifications.
Because talent is a company’s most valuable asset, use these Employee Retention Strategies to keep your best people on board.
Avi Jain
Company Culture
February 21, 2022