What Is The Key To Employee Retention?
Retaining employees is an often talked about business priority, regardless of how low the existing employee turnover rate is. Leaders understand Investing in employees by providing training, pay increases, or stakes in the company is far more cost-effective than replacing them; it’s also a surefire way to boost team morale and create a culture worth sticking around for.
So, what is the key to employee retention?
Here are our top tips:
Prioritize growth and development
Provide employees opportunities to learn, train and upskill continuously. Professional development is critical to creating a loyal workforce that is both engaged and productive. Your employees want to know that you care about their success as much as they do yours. When you invest in the success of your employees, they will not only feel happier and more motivated to work hard for your company, they’ll want to stay longer to invest in the company, the same way the company has invested in them. That’s why companies that rated highly on employee training experienced 53% lower attrition, according to a recent LinkedIn survey.
It’s essential to consider the professional future of your employees. Upskilling employees won’t necessarily accelerate their departure. Instead, helping your employees to achieve their long and short-term goals is the perfect incentive for them to stick around. Employees who feel they have hit a wall in their career progression will likely look elsewhere for growth opportunities. The data is clear. For example, the LinkedIn survey found that 94% of employees would stay with a company longer if it invested in them by supporting their learning and development. Meanwhile, a Deloitte report found the top factors influencing employees to switch companies were lack of career progress (37%) and feeling a sense of purpose and challenge in their jobs (27%).
Employees feel more energized when learning and development are integral to their roles. Top employers recognize the power of investing in valuable knowledge-building and see employee engagement provides a strong return on investment.
Recognize and reward
It is vital to demonstrate an appreciation of employees. Rewards like gift cards, bonuses, or gifts are powerful short-term motivators, but pairing those rewards with consistent recognition will set your company apart. Managerial praise, affirmation, and recognizing accomplishments are great ways to show appreciation. Longer-term strategies to reward and recognize employees include stretch assignments, promotions, pay raises, and opportunities to work on high-profile projects.
By intentionally recognizing what your employees bring to the team, you foster the natural, human connections that make employees want to stay. After all, being an appreciated team member and having a good relationship with your manager is foundational to a great employee experience.
Support employee wellbeing
Empathy, or willingness to understand the feelings of another, is critical to employee retention. According to the 2020 State of Workplace Empathy study, 90% of those surveyed said they would stay with organizations that felt empathetic to their needs and willing to work longer hours. 60% said they’d take less pay in favor of an empathetic employer!
If you want to be a master at employee retention, focusing on empathy and wellbeing should be pillars of your organizational culture. Do what you can to ensure your employees maintain a healthy work-life balance. Over the pandemic, separating working hours from our relaxation hours became more challenging. 37% of people report working longer hours, and 40% report burnout - likely because work is constantly accessible, and it is difficult to “switch off” when your living room is the same place you’ve been working all day. Be proactive in ensuring your employees feel they can switch off at the end of the day without judgment. Overworked and burnt-out employees are unlikely to be effective in their roles and usually look for an exit strategy.
Additionally, remember to practice empathic communication and decision-making. Whatever the interaction taking place, take a moment to reflect: if you were in their shoes, how would you like to be treated? Whether offering ample time for parental leave, annual leave, sick days, or compassionate leave, it’s essential to recognize that your employees have lives and responsibilities outside work. Show your employees that they’re important to you by encouraging, mentoring, and empathizing with them, and watch how quickly morale and loyalty skyrockets within your team.
Allow flexibility
Since the pandemic, various ways of getting work done have emerged. Most business sectors have offered remote and hybrid working solutions, but as lockdowns have eased up, some organizations have returned to pre-pandemic workplace norms. However, the pandemic has shown that employees desire the autonomy to decide how they get their work done, whether in an office, hybrid, or remote. For example, working from home may allow single parents of young children to avoid costly daycare. Others report they don’t want to deal with a long commute and would leave their jobs if forced back into the office. At the same time, each organization will decide its minimum office requirements; studies have revealed that workplace flexibility can improve effectiveness and morale.
Listen to your employees
Recently, a Salesforce report found that employees who felt heard were nearly 5xs more likely to perform at their very best, so if you want a thriving workplace, listening to employees is essential. Take the time to check how your employees feel with 1-on-1 meetings and group discussions. When you receive feedback, act on it - and if you can’t, communicate the reasons why not. Gallup states, “One of the fastest ways to destroy workplace morale is to ask employees their opinions about it, then ignore their answers.” Let your team know - through your words and actions - that their input guides how work gets done in the organization.
Conduct stay interviews
A stay interview is the opposite of an exit interview. While an exit interview offers some helpful insights in that it allows employees to speak freely about their work experience with no filter, a stay interview allows you to pinpoint what motivates people to stay and diagnose individual and company-wide issues early on.
At a stay interview, you can ask questions like:
Why have they remained at the company?
How can you help improve their experience even more?
How would they like their efforts to be recognized?
What more could the company be doing for employees’ growth and development?
Stay interviews are an excellent way to increase employee retention.
If you liked these tips, click here to try the Ignition Academy and see how we can help you with your employee retention program!
