Increase your employee retention with these 3 key strategies

Unsurprisingly, every business, whether a small family bakery or a large multi-national’s focusing on different strategies to ensure they remain viable, successful and continue to grow. Where possible, they’re striving to meet targets, and maintain customer satisfaction with the service provided. One key factor in a business’ success is employee retention – retaining key employees should be at the forefront of every leader’s mind. Building and managing a successful company means crafting, engaging and empowering a great team. The investment involved in locating and recruiting the right people’s significant in both time and resource, but this is only one key stage. What then follows is to ensure individuals are personally motivated, and in turn, support the business in its successful growth and development. This personal contribution to the success of the business along with attention to other motivating factors, often unique to the individual, will fuel workplace satisfaction which can then lead to increased loyalty and them staying with the business much longer. It is however, not a one way street and it’s important you regularly ask yourself –  what’s in it for the employee?

Perhaps never more so than now, businesses are having to adjust to different working practices. Retaining and motivating their best talent, while considering the potential five different employee generations is neither easy, nor straightforward. However, there are strategies a business owner can take, to help avoid the dreaded resignation conversation;

1. process & expectations

Retention of your best talent always starts with the recruitment process – the application journey, screening, interviews – identifying what the business is looking for etc. Going through a robust recruitment process and selecting the candidate with right skills and competencies most aligned with the sector, your team and organisational culture’s key to ensuring they’re the right fit, which benefits both parties. It’s also important expectations are managed and understood during this process, so the employee’s fully aware of the role they’re entering into, and what’s expected of them in terms of performance.

2. clarity & development

Providing an ongoing training plan with a clear path to development and advancement’s another important strategy for increasing retention. Promoting from within not only provides a clear path to greater compensation and responsibility, but it also helps employees feel valued and that they play a crucial part in the company’s success. Of course, promotions should always go in-hand with employee development and further education, something which is always an important tool in the employee retention arsenal. A commitment to training and development’s seen by many employees as an investment in their personal worth and as a result, can be a powerful incentive to stay in the company.

3. recognition & reward

Offering relevant benefits or incentives is a good way to acknowledge positive performance and delivery and in doing so, drive retention. Of course, every individual’s different and what motivates one can be different to another, so businesses should consider benefits that can satisfy a wide range of employees. Research shows each generation has a different view on what’s considered an incentive and, in many cases, these are low-budget items. Options to consider could be, but aren’t limited to agile or flexible working (this should be beyond COVID-19), productivity incentives, paid sickness leave, shopping discounts, gadget insurance, additional annual leave, financial awards such as stock options, and volunteer days to name but a few. These means of recognising and rewarding your team can still go a long way towards helping them feel valued beyond the ‘day job’. But don’t simply use these examples, feel free to get creative where recognition and reward’s concerned, some of the best incentives are often very ‘left field’.

An additional element, which is often highly valued by employees we talk to, is the openness and transparency of their management team. Creating engaging communication between employees and the senior team helps foster a sense of community and a shared purpose, where employees are encouraged to express themselves, bring new ideas to the table and again, feel their input’s recognised and valued.