6 Best Practices for Employee Retention
Employees are the lifeline of any business. However, not all organizations are able to keep the best workers, and it hurts their company more than they think. Employee retention, or the capacity of an enterprise to maintain its current workforce, speaks volumes about the health and success of your business.
This is directly tied to workforce satisfaction since a good experience usually leads to a higher intention of workers to stay. When your employees stay, they prevent the company from productivity losses and grow a business with consistency.
Importance of Employee Retention
Staff retention is critical to your company’s profitability. How will you be able to work on your goals when employees leave before they contribute significantly to your growth? This also hampers your team’s ability to bond and work towards your business objectives.
Moreover, a high employee turnover rate negatively influences your team’s performance. Companies that don’t focus on employee retention and, in turn, lose a valuable member fail to recognize the signs. Their engagement and productivity are likely to drop in the months leading to their resignation.
For companies, the frequent hiring, training, and onboarding can set them back financially. If employee attrition is a growing concern for your business, these best practices can help you improve employee retention and foster an engaging company that motivates people to stay.
6 Best Practices for Employee Retention
1. Provide Proper Training and Development
You’re mistaken if you think there’s nothing you could have done to keep employees from leaving their post. Managers or companies can make people stay if they take proactive steps. Offering training and development to help them upskill and grow professionally is an enticing way to do so, benefitting both employees and employers.
Developing a training program for your team or encouraging your employee on to take training courses motivates them to be better and takes their skills further. Consider growth to be a natural component of work, and offer them to your team whenever you can.
2. Encourage Work-Life Balance
Unmanageable stress is one of the reasons why your people might look for new jobs. With the shift to remote working and the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, employee burnout is not uncommon. Championing work-life balance as a part of your organization’s work culture means happier and more productive employees.
People hardly take time off, and it’s difficult to draw a line between work and personal tasks. Your organization should proactively create a culture focused on improving employee well-being to combat burnout. Managers must show employees that it’s encouraged to take time off when necessary.
To add, policies that promote work-life balance, such as having “recharge days” for a company-wide day of rest can also normalize self-care and help your workforce establish a healthy footing between life and work.
3. Listen to Employees and Their Insights
Regularly attending to your employee’s needs significantly influences engagement. Moreover, listening to what they have to say is the best way you can monitor their progress, understand how they feel so you can address them effectively, and see your areas for improvement to create a healthier workplace.
Employees that know they are heard are more engaged at work. Asking for input not only helps workers feel valued and respected but also has a good advantage—allowing you to develop better employee engagement initiatives and elevate your entire company’s operations.
4. Implement Continuous Performance Feedback
Career issues remain the number one reason workers leave their jobs, according to a 2021 Retention Report. Employees want to know how they’re performing at work, so conducting a performance evaluation and offering feedback is essential to their growth and development.
Performance feedback lets them know of areas where they excel and where they need to develop. Your feedback demonstrates that you are concerned about their growth and shows them that their actions make a significant impact on the firm.
Know that when you provide actionable comments, you show that you care about their progress and want to see them be better. In a way, this assures them you recognize their hard work and contributions. If you let your employees work without providing regular feedback, you leave them unaware about the good things they do and their opportunities for improvement to lead them in the right direction.
5. Offer Benefits and Perks
Prioritizing employee well-being motivates employees to stay at a company. Organizations that work on implementing processes and benefits to enhance people’s well-being encourage them to stay, especially when they see changes in the company that helps them perform better. After all, when workers are happy and satisfied at work, they are less likely to leave.
Offering them benefits and perks, especially those that help make the work from home setup more comfortable, shows that you care for your team members. Eventually, this might help them feel more secure in their jobs.
Incentives such as health insurance, for example, guarantee that workers have access to sufficient treatment if they get ill. Fitness discounts, access to corporate promotions, or food delivery or wellness boxes may all be welcome perks. If you want to incorporate benefits directly tied to employee wishes, ask your workers for comments on what they’d like to see.
6. Encourage a Sense of Belongingness
Employees who feel comfortable, included, and respected at work are more likely to stay with your business. Indeed, having an inclusive environment is crucial for keeping your employees. This implies that promoting diversity at work is critical if you want all of your workers to feel acknowledged and cared for.
Organizations that don’t embrace diversity are likely to experience a drop in workforce retention. If employees sense there is prejudice or any kind of discrimination at work, it won’t be surprising to see them hand their resignation. Moreover, when employees raise concerns about discrimination, take appropriate action and do your best to ensure it will never happen to anyone again.
Retaining your people can be achieved by first eliminating racism in the workplace and ensuring that everyone, regardless of their color, age, sex, religion, and background, is treated equally.
Employee Retention, Bottom Line
Every great leader and business owner recognizes that employees are critical to their company’s success. Those who are well-taken care of will stay in the organization.
More engaged employees also work more productively and better helps your business move forward in reaching its goals. Thus, adopting these techniques in your enterprise will definitely improve employee satisfaction and translate to greater profitability.
6 Best Practices for Employee Retention
- Provide proper training and development
Developing a training program for your team or encouraging your employee on to take training courses motivates them to be better and takes their skills further.
- Encourage work-life balance
Your organization should proactively create a culture focused on improving employee well-being to combat burnout.
- Listen to employees and their insights
Regularly attending to your employee’s needs significantly influences engagement. Employees that know they are heard are more engaged at work.
- Implement continuous performance feedback
Your feedback demonstrates that you are concerned about your employees’ growth and shows them that their actions make a significant impact on the firm.
- Offer benefits and perks
Organizations that work on implementing processes and benefits to enhance people’s well-being encourage them to stay, especially when they see changes in the company that helps them perform better.
- Encourage a sense of belongingness
Employees who feel comfortable, included, and respected at work are more likely to stay with your business.
About the Author
Regina del Rosario is from Booth & Partners, a Seattle-based company with operations in the Philippines. With a solid background in conducting interviews with multiple candidates to identify the one with the most potential. Hired over 100 applicants for positions in dozens of industries and campaigns, at levels ranging from interns to upper-level management. Excellent communication abilities, including written and oral, professional and interpersonal. Highly organized and is able to complete several complicated administrative tasks simultaneously.
