30
Mar

Employee Retention: 6 Ways To Keep Great Talent In Your Business (Part 2)

Employee retention should always be a priority. But right now a staggering 35% of employees may leave their jobs each year by 2023. And with remote work opportunities, employees have a more comprehensive range of potential employers to evaluate than ever before.

Our previous article shared strategies to help you retain talent at your organisation. Today we share six more employee retention strategies:

1. Create an exceptional onboarding experience

You get one time to make a first impression, right? Making employees a valuable part of your organisation starts with onboarding.

Help new employees shift from an outsider to insider by educating them about their responsibilities, giving them the resources needed to complete their tasks and goals, and creating an environment where they feel accepted. And ask employees for feedback so you can make sure their needs are met and improve your onboarding process.

A structured plan and the personnel involved with onboarding have a significant role in delivering onboarding successfully. Make sure tasks and timelines are scheduled. Remind key personnel of their duties and responsibilities to execute the plan whilst reinforcing how important onboarding is to making new employees happy and productive.  

2. Offer winning incentives

Incentives help to acknowledge and reward employees for fantastic work. 85% of employees feel more motivated to do their best when an incentive is offered. There are endless ways to incentivise your employees, like referral programs, tuition reimbursement, and profit-sharing.

There are plenty of other incentives that keep your employees healthy and happy. Wellness rewards like gym memberships or subscriptions to meditation apps can help your employees unwind and take care of themselves. For example, employees who rate their work-life balance highly are 10% more likely to stay at their company. From a management point of view, it turns out that companies who let their teamwork from home have a 25% lower employee turnover rate since they show their care for the well-being and work-life balance of their employees.

Giving managers a stipend to put on fun events each month, letting employees choose what projects they work on, and providing extra paid time off to rest and recharge are also excellent options that motivate just as well as more traditional incentives. 

3. Be a brand to be proud of

Employees want pride in where they work and for their job to have a purpose and a vision to get behind. Be a business known for positives. Key areas that attract and retain talent just now are:

  • Clear Environmentally-friendly policies and product or service offers. 
  • Proactive support for developing staff skills, careers through training and promotion.
  • Diversity, Inclusion & Equity measures and policies. 

Employees who are passionate and care about their impact on the world will consider working for a positive branded business as critically important. While every company has to evaluate where their salaries and benefits sit compared to regional industry standards, those direct money concerns are not the only way to retain your employees.

4. Continuous feedback on performance

Many employers are abandoning the annual performance review favouring more frequent meetings with team members. In these one-on-one meetings, talk with your employees about their short- and long-term professional goals and help them to visualise their future with the company. Keep communicating career advancement scenarios together and laying out a realistic plan for reaching those goals.

Plus, getting to know what every employee is dealing with and helping them fix these core issues will help you lower your employee turnover rates.

5. Challenge Your Employees In A Balanced Way

Doing the same thing day in and day out can lead to boredom and apathy. Finding the balance between challenge and support is not easy. This is because every employee is different, and what one might discover rewarding, another might find tedious and too complex. As a leader, you need to know your staff, and you can offer meaningful and engaging challenges by:

  • Expressing belief in your employees.
  • Pushing people out of their comfort zone.
  • Give them a chance to take a risk.
  • Seeing failure as a learning opportunity.
  • Process failure together by learning from it.
  • Encourage a growth mindset.
  • Reward effort – not just results.

Leaders are in a position of authority, and when they express the potential they see in their team, the employees’ self-belief grows.

6. Manage to retain

The relationship between managers and their direct reports can enormously impact employee retention. Almost half of the workforce quit their job because of a bad manager, and 60% of employees think their managers need training.

The best managers act as coaches and focus on getting the best out of their direct reports. They are empathetic, optimistic, recognise employee value, and provide actionable feedback. A coaching approach fosters mutual trust, making it feel like bosses, and their direct reports are on the same team. Perhaps most importantly, coaching reduces stress. By setting goals, giving workers autonomy, and evaluating progress often, employees know exactly where they stand and need to go. It has been found that workers who know and use their strengths average 10 to 19% increased sales and help boost their organisation’s bottom line.

The bottom line

As a leader, you need to develop strategies to impact employee retention positively. You can boost your retention efforts this year and beyond with open feedback channels, building a culture of recognition, and other vital techniques.

If you would like to learn more about talent attraction and retention strategies, contact ABN Resource experts for more information.