Carla Sutherland
No matter the industry you’re in, the people who make up your organzation will always be your greatest asset. That’s why retaining them should always be among your top priorities.
In this blog we’ll explain why employee retention is so important, give some example strategies for employee retention plans, and offer some tips around retention best practices.
What is employee retention?
Employee retention is the process of keeping employees in your organization and reducing your staff turnover.
Employee turnover is the rate at which you lose staff over a certain period because they leave or retire. This doesn’t include staff who are fired or made redundant. It’s often calculated as a percentage over a certain time.
For example, if you had a team of ten people, and three of them left during the past year, your team’s annual employee turnover rate would be 30%. You want this number to be as low as possible, as a low employee turnover is often a key indicator that your staff are happy and content in their roles. Note that some degree of employee turnover is healthy for a business to cycle in new perspectives and innovation opportunities.
The key aspect of employee retention is that it is an active process – in the current employment climate, we need to work constantly to ensure our employees feel connected to the organization, engaged with their work and valued as members of the team.
Why is employee retention important?
It seems obvious, but it’s worth reminding yourself of the headache you’ll encounter if one of your top employees leaves your organization. Losing a key team member means your team’s general effectiveness will decrease – and if they go to another job in your industry, their skills and experience will soon be utilized by your competitors.
Often, your key team members are popular figures who act as champions and cheerleaders within your organization. They have a huge influence on your culture and motivation levels, so their leaving can have a very damaging impact on the remaining employees.
So, how do you improve employee retention? What are the secrets to retaining staff and reducing employee turnover, even in a competitive job market? We’ve got some solid employee retention strategies and tips for you below.
3 top strategies to improve employee retention
1. Set up an employee discounts program
An employee discounts program is one of the easiest ways to enhance your employee value proposition and keep your team satisfied, reducing the chance that they’ll have their heads turned by another position elsewhere. It shows you understand your employees’ financial positions and are doing everything you can to help make their money go further.
It’s also worth considering the psychological effect of discount programs in relation to retaining employees. Continuous access to discounts with hundreds of retailers means unlimited opportunities to make a day better, stretch paychecks further and save considerable money.
2. Offer enhanced employee benefits
Here’s your chance to really make a difference in the lives of your employees. Speak to your employees to figure out what they need to make their lives easier and happier, then create an employee benefits program that offers it.
You can also align your employee benefits with your business strategy and company values. For example, hoping to entice people back to the office but keep to your eco-friendly pledge? Consider offering commuter benefits or even a micromobility stipend to encourage employees to make their commutes more sustainable.
3. Prioritize recognition & reward
It sounds simple, but many organizations miss out on this basic employee need. A recognition and reward program is the easiest way to reward good work and strong results. It’s how you foster an environment of success and improve employee retention.
This is a continuous process. Pay reviews may only come once a year, but a successfully delivered project needs immediate recognition. Offering employees a broad range of reward options is an easy way to maximize reward value for each employee without creating burden for HR teams.
Empowering your team and creating a positive, appreciative work culture that rewards hard work is one of the most formidable employee retention strategies you can invest in.
Employee retention best practices
Now that you’ve got a few strategies to try out, let’s go through some best practice principles when aiming to retain your best talent.
Onboarding is key
It might just seem like a pleasant way to get to know your new hire, but onboarding is much more than that, and can have a huge impact on improving employee retention.
By organizing a comprehensive onboarding program, you can teach new team members about the job and company culture, ensuring they fit in quickly and gel with their colleagues. It’s also a great chance to provide any training or support they might need, and gives you an opportunity to take them through any welcome packages or mentorship programs you might offer, as well as introduce employee resource groups.
Focus on employee wellbeing
Professional wellbeing is one of the best tools you have in your goal to improve employee retention. It’s not difficult to see why – high employee satisfaction leads to less turnover because content employees are more likely to stay put.
Make sure your team has access to wellbeing initiatives, whether that’s education, professional training or just the space and time to become better versions of themselves. Offering volunteering days is another great way to improve wellbeing while allowing your staff to give back to their communities.
Remember, it’s not all about a higher salary.
There will always be another job offering a better financial package that could catch the eye of your employees. That’s why you should always focus on the working environment you can create for them.
Creating a welcoming, enthusiastic environment where team members are allowed to experiment and grow within their careers can be worth more than a higher salary. Develop this culture within your office and you’ll be sure to reduce employee turnover.
So, why do employees leave?
There are many reasons that a person might want to leave an organization that have nothing to do with financial incentives. Lack of engagement, poor relationships with managers, unclear paths for progression and philosophical differences are all possible reasons an organization might lose a valued employee.
But these are all issues that you have the power to dispel. By instituting a strong employee retention strategy, you can ensure your staff are supported by both their manager and peers, while also feeling connecting to their work and the organization as a whole.
Retaining talent via an employee engagement plan
The different employee retention strategies and techniques we’ve mentioned here will work best if you are sure all your staff are engaging with them. Offering a free gym membership can’t boost employee retention if none of your staff know about it! Ensure you have a solid internal communications platform – and strategy – to communicate all your various perks and benefits with your team.
Be sure as well to encourage feedback from your employees. If they respond well to a benefit, see if you can expand it. If your staff aren’t fans of it, then don’t be afraid to cut it and try something new. Listen to your team and build your strategy around what works for them.
You can take this one step further and actively measure employee engagement with your various benefits. Were people clambering over themselves to sign up to your wellbeing program 12 months ago, but this year there hasn’t been much take up? Take note of the data and you’ll be able to see the changing tastes of your workforce.
The benefit of increasing this kind of engagement is that you’ll build a stronger connection between your employees and the organization.
An engaged employee is the best employee, and if they know their feedback can impact the benefits they receive, a sense of ownership will start to grow, which in turn will help improve your employee retention rate.
As a final point, it’s worth recognizing that change always happens in the workplace. People look for new challenges or face changes in their lives, meaning some people will inevitably leave. Don’t hide away from this. Instead, recognize it and frame it as a potential advantage – there is a now an empty seat to fill, either by bringing in new talent or promoting from within!
Schedule a demo to discover how you can drive your retention goals by enhancing the employee experience across your organization.
