The benefits of improving employee retention at your company are exponential. Retaining quality employees adds increased productivity, higher customer satisfaction, and morale while reducing turnover costs.
What are the best methods to ensure that employee retention remains high?
First Step:
- Data driven. Understand where you currently are in order to figure out the best methods for improvement.
- Understand the cost of turnover. Recruitment, selection, orientation, loss of productivity, vacancy costs and customer impact costs. This will enable you to realize what needs to be modified moving forward.
Second Step:
- Find out why employees are leaving your organization. Exit interviews are beneficial in learning an employee’s reason for leaving.
- Find out the best sources for your new hires. Where are you finding the best employees and how do you keep this relationship intact?
1) Develop a profile of your ideal candidate. What qualities and attributes does your ideal employee need in order to fit in with the culture and dynamics of your organization? This will make the interview process more streamlined when you know exactly what you’re looking for.
2)Conduct a job analysis. This should contain behavioral, cognitive reasoning and skill assessments to define and outline the key components for success in the job role.
3)Build a job proposition. Why should the ideal candidate work at your company? What selling points do you have to entice candidates? How is your company different and unique from the rest?
4)Provide effective employee orientation. When entering an organization, employees must have a positive experience. First impressions are lasting impressions and each employee wants to feel excited during their orientation period.
5)Encourage future development. Show your employees that you are invested in their development within the company by offering further training and growth opportunities. Invest in: training, job shadowing, coaching, mentoring, and cross-experience. Employees will want to stay at a company where they can develop and grow upon their skill set. In a study by Linkage, Inc. more than 40 percent of the respondents said they would consider leaving their present employer for another job with the same benefits if that job provided better career development and greater challenges.
6)Be competitive! Provide a fair pay system to employees.
7)Improve relationships. Employees stay at a company where they feel that their manager listens to them and addresses the issues they have. There needs to be a balance between the two.
8)Provide employee recognition. Employees will stay where they feel appreciated and needed. Providing small awards for a job well done are little things that will show employees that you appreciate all their hard work. When an employee receives that recognition, they will want to continue to impress by stepping up their performance.
What methods do you use to increase employee retention at your organization? We would love to hear your thoughts.