Are you one of many employers that overlooks employee retention? In business, you want to ensure your employees are happy and stay at your company for as long as possible. If you focus on both of these things, you can save your company from the hassle of finding replacements and lead to a stronger team overall.
Your employees are the most valuable asset of your company. With them, your business is sustainable.
The Importance of Employee Retention
Employee retention is an often overlooked area and one that deserves more attention. However, it’s not only about keeping your employees happy. Employee retention can help you save money.
Many employers think they have it covered and that employee retention isn’t an issue for their business because they believe they can find a replacement easily. Nevertheless, companies out there are losing thousands of dollars in productivity due to poor retention and employee turnover.
According to the Society for Human Resource Management, 47% of HR managers say retention and turnover is the top workforce management problem. And the situation worsens when trying to find someone with qualified experience in their specific industry.
This means replacing an experienced employee could take months before making a final decision on a new hire.
How To Improve Employee Retention
If you’re ready to start focusing on employee retention, here are the steps you can take to improve it.
1. Create an Employee Retention Plan
An employee retention plan is crucial because it will help you understand how well your business’s retention strategy is working. Plus, it will provide you with guidance for future changes. You’ll also be able to easily compare your efforts with other companies in your industry to give you an idea of how your plan is going effectively.
Use these tools to create a strong retention strategy for your team:
- Employee surveys: You can conduct these annually or quarterly, depending on the size of your company. However, you can use them to gain feedback about the work environment, compensation or benefits package, leadership style and more.
- Exit interviews: Start conducting these when an employee leaves the company. This is to help you find out what is causing your employees to leave.
Once you’ve figured out why you’re losing valuable talent, your next step is implementing strategies that reduce or mitigate the problem.
2. Hire Employees You Trust Will Work Out
It may seem obvious, but sometimes it’s easy to forget that you must hire people who fit your workplace and its culture.
If your characteristics are in place, start paying close attention to the job candidates to see if they match. Find out whether they’re switching jobs too often. It’s best to find someone willing to grow with your company rather than gain experience and take it somewhere else.
Once you hire the right candidate, every staff member needs to understand what you expect of them and how they can help each other succeed.
3. Focus On Employee Satisfaction and Engagement
The more your employees are unsatisfied with their job — the less likely they will be engaged. When this occurs, companies suffer from high turnover and low productivity.
Employee satisfaction and engagement are a big deal for various reasons:
- It improves employee performance because happy employees equal higher engagement. They’ll perform better at their jobs than those who don’t feel valued or appreciated.
- It helps businesses grow faster. You know how much time and money it takes to hire new employees. When you keep your current team happy, they’ll keep referring their friends to work with you, too — which means even more qualified people to join the fold.
Make Employee Retention a Priority
The bottom line is employee retention should be a priority for your business. No one can expect to keep up with their competitors if they let valuable employees slip through the cracks.
Take the time to ensure your workplace culture is strong enough to keep employees happy and engaged. Then, implement a plan that keeps them around long-term.
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