Retaining talent can be expensive, but losing talent will end up costing your business even more money – not to mention the other negatives that accompany people leaving, such as talent gaps, lost productivity, and the time and resources exhausted attracting new talent. Below are some tips to help you develop an effective employee retention strategy that will help you leverage the most vital component of your business: your people.
1. Give Detailed Feedback
When employees don’t know where they stand in an organization, they have no clue what kind of results their contributions are eliciting. There is a direct correlation between seeing the results of work and job satisfaction – which means that providing detailed feedback is an absolute must of an effective employee retention strategy. If employees can see the fruits of their labour, it will help them know that they are making a valuable contribution to the success of the business.
2. Watch Your Managers
Steve Miranda, the Managing Director of the Center for Advanced Human Resources at Cornell University, says “Employees don’t quit jobs, they quit managers.” This claim is based on the relationship between poor people management and employee turnover – the more tension between employee and manager, the more likely employees are to leave. As such, it’s important that your employee retention strategy take into account people managers and their relationships with employees, and have procedures in place to take corrective action where necessary.
3. Focus on the Work Environment
People are much more focused now than ever on aspects that range beyond compensation. Open, collaborative work environments, flat organizational structure, flexible hours, inclusivity, diversity, fun – these are all becoming more important elements that increase job satisfaction. An effective employee retention strategy will take into account work environment, with a focus on ways to promote an environment that employees love.
4. Automate HR Processes
Good human resource management is a vital part of any effective and profitable business, and official employee retention strategies are part and parcel of proper HR management. While the HR process itself may not generate production or profit, it enables businesses to function more consistently and efficiently.
While there may not appear to be a direct correlation, automating HR processes can help facilitate and maintain an effective employee retention strategy. Many systems used by companies currently are rife with errors – failure to pay overtime correctly, properly log vacation, or compensate correctly, etc. Obviously, this harms morale and threatens employee retention. By automating such processes, you can ensure that employees are looked after and feel more engaged.
In the end, organizations need to focus on employee retention strategies that will help them retain the most important aspect of their business: talent. This is more critical now as the economy improves and more opportunities become available. By following the above tips, you can start focusing on developing an official employee retention strategy that delivers results.