As a business increasing employee retention should always be a huge priority. Nowadays employees don’t stay with their employers for years and years, this is mainly due to poor employee retention and the new normal of remote working, this therefore means employees have a much larger range of businesses to evaluate than before the COVID Pandemic.
Why does employee retention matter so much?
Employee retention needs to be one of the top priorities of business, this is mainly due to the cost of losing the top talent can be huge. This is mainly due to the cost of recruiting time, interview/shortlisting time, knowledge of the business and also productivity. Low retention rates in a business also impact productivity and performance within a team very quickly. One thing that is noticed in all businesses before employees quit is the motivation and how much of a team player they are. Another area which is noticed is that they do the absolute minimum amount of work while also not meeting long term deadlines.
From a HR point of view, around 75% of reasons behind employees wanting to leave the company are preventable. The best way to find out about issues making employees wanting to quit is to address them before they become a huge problem.
What can we do to increase employee retention?
Have the right employees working for your business
Having the right employees always makes your business thrive. The best employees want to be round other employees, and also help the others by inspiring them. While employees want to sell them self to your business, they also want the business to be sold to them. With getting the best employees, you want your previous employees to share with others about how much they enjoyed you working for the business. The key point is you don’t want previous employees sharing bad reasons why they left such as poor management and not being rewarded for their work etc.
When you have the right employees, each of them will push each other to increase sales and helping each other grow/develop as an individual. This therefore means, you as business grows as well!
Provide career progression/professional development opportunities
A business can lose huge amounts due to not offering career progression and professional development opportunities. Even though professional development costs your business money, it also means you increase employee retention but can also mean if you are upskilling them this can also help them in bring in more sales or even offering a better service/product.
The best way to go about this is by having annual reviews with your employees to where they would like to improve, what development they would like and also seeing where they want to be in their career in the next 6-12 months such as progressing to management etc.
Offering incentives
This is one of the main reasons why employees want to leave their jobs due to low to no incentives offered. What you find is if a business has incentives, people want to work for that company while also encouraging them to go the extra mile for the business.
Their a many different incentives, this could be car allowance, remote working, discounted private health care, discounted gym memberships, profit sharing, bonuses and much more!
Focus on employee wellness
Employee wellness is a huge problem in all industries. The most common issue is employees burning out due to very long hours and huge expectations from employers. Employees suffering from poor wellness is one of top things that makes people quit their jobs.
There are a number of ways in which we can reduce this; these include flexible working hours, work load review and much more.
With employee wellness, we can train managers to spot signs of work-related stress, employee burnout and other mental health issues with in the workplace. Why not read one of our recent blogs specifically about Workplace Stress?
Having the right employee rewards
Having rewards for your employee can motivate them hugely to always put 100% effort into their work. The best example of this for those who work in sales is a commission scheme. The way this usually works is everyone has a set amount they must make monthly. Let’s say this is £3000 and then commission is then whatever you make over that is 5% paid directly to you the following month. Businesses can also do something like a quarterly bonus for whichever employee has put the most work into bringing in extra sales. This could be attending meetings/networking events out of their usual working hours.
Positive employee engagement
Positively engaged employees are what make your business a great place to work. If your employees aren’t engaged positively they can bring down team morale, discourage other employees from achieving the best while also setting bad examples to those other employees.
The best way to increase employee engagement is by giving everyone a voice, this is where employers can give everyone a say. This could be something the business could do different to improve or even for new services/products they could offer. This could also by completing surveys to judge employee engagement within the company. The main thing we need to do when employees are giving their voice is not just to listen to it and leave it, we need to act on it as much as we can. So if we complete an engagement survey and areas have been raised by a number of people where we can improve, something needs to be done to rectify the problem!
Did you know that OJ Health & Safety provide HR Services nationwide? If your business could benefit from our HR Services, then why not get in touch!