9 Best Strategies to Retain Your Employees

Last Updated: December 16, 2021

John Lowson, Head of Operations at Golpik Inc, shares vital strategies to retain your old employee to reduce long-term costs and a smooth workflow. Use these strategies that work and move your organization to new heights.

Escalating employee attrition rate has become a significant pain for employers across the globe. As per the recent study by SHRM, “An employer has to spend money equivalent to six months of a salary to find a new replacement and train it for upcoming challenges.”

For employees, turnover damages morale, and momentum. As a result, they fail to keep pace with
changing environment within an organization.

Well, how would you retain your best employees, any idea?

Don’t fret.

In this blog post, I’m going to discuss the nine best employee retention strategies that work.

1. Eliminate a Culture of Communication Gap

Companies grow fast, and employees don’t want to leave their jobs when there is NO communication gap. A communication gap is a big reason that people don’t want to work at companies where their voice is unheard and/or misunderstood. A gap in communication can be of different types and varying degrees.

Notably, among C-Suite executives, this flaw can create big trouble inside for company and stake-holders. A communication gap can happen when there are raised bars, and employees find it hard to share their thoughts and suggestions about any issue at hand. Severely, a big part of the business world is prone to communication gaps.

So, a company with well-defined vision works to eliminate a culture of communication gap & fights back common businessOpens a new window issues.

Learn More: 10 Trends That Will Shape Recruitment in 2020Opens a new window

2. Avoid Sudden Changes

Change is indispensable for a company, and if it’s about a positive outcome, betterment, and high productivity, then it must be welcome unobstructed.  On the other hand, employees are supposed to be adaptable because this world of business is fickle. So, if your business is not ready for instant change, it can be alarming.

But here is the problem: Sudden change inside a company of any kind is not healthy either. It will be good if employers discuss forthcoming changes related to anything and embark on the transition process with predefined time. Not only will it ease up accepting differences, but also employees will be happy to accommodate new changes.

Don’t frustrate your employees with unannounced and sudden changes; they draw a terrible picture of yours and will leave you.

3. Incorporate an Effective Onboarding Process

Once a new candidate has made it through the interviewing process, onboarding is a crucial step. It’s a make or break phase for the long-term success of your new employees.

According to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), a new employee attending a well-planned orientation program is 70% more likely to prolong his stay at the company. On the other hand, around 23% of employees that left a company said that they had stayed if they had more explicit guidelines on responsibilities at the beginning

In short, a smooth onboarding process is critical to reducing staff turnover. So, don’t forget, while you’re making employee retention strategy in 2020.

Learn More: 5 Reasons Workplace Technology Impacts Recruiting & Retaining TalentOpens a new window

4. Never Welcome Micromanagement

Henry Mintzberg, A Canadian Academic and Author on business and management, once said: – “Management is, above all, a practice where art, science, and craft meet.” But, if this management turns into micromanagement, this will be no less than havoc for a company and its internal culture.

Employees working under insecure bosses are direct victims of micromanagement. A good company that wants to retain its top talent never welcomes micromanagement.

Well, by applying the following tricks, a company can quickly get rid of the culture of micromanagement:

  1. Be a Facilitator, Not a Taskmaster
  2. Adopt a fail-forward attitude
  3. Give your Employees More Responsibility Than They’re Comfortable with
  4. Trust your Team
  5. Ask Employees How They Want To Be Managed
  6. Manage Expectations, Not Tasks
  7. Focus on Managing your Culture

 

5. Encourage your Employees in their Strength Areas

Every employee has particular strengths and weaknesses. Strength areas are those where an employee is naturally talented at or trained enough to carry out particular tasks with ease and perfection. A good boss always encourages his employees in their strength areas because he believes that instead of correcting weaknesses, it is easy and fruitful to help employees with strengths.

When you encourage your employees in their strength areas, it creates a bond between you and your employees. They feel appreciated and worthy. It adds more value of yours in their eyes, and they will love to show up every day and will take every challenge as an opportunity to move forward.

Employees’ strengths can make your company more reliableOpens a new window , and as it offers the following benefits:

  1. When employers focus on employees’ strengths, it leads to improved well-being.
  2. It helps in the improvement of employees’ lives and the company’s culture.
  3. Engagement escalates when managers focus on each employee’s strengths.

6. Never Entertain Office Politics

Office politics is a silent killer.  There are varying reasons that office politics is not helpful for your company. It could be due to your employees are trying or tried to (in the past) to control and achieve something beyond their authority, or arrogant superiors, or jealous colleagues, or too much gossip at the workplace.

Office politics is sure to happen, you can’t stop it, but you can ensure that you’re able to navigate it without losing your control, so keep following four rules in mind:

  1. Find out the source of office politics, weigh the toxicity level, and foretell its timeline.
  2. Seek Mentors’ help and avoid gossiping around.
  3. Foster existing connections at your workplace while doing your great work.
  4. Slow down, respond, and stop reacting.

7. Always Offer Competitive Base Salary or Hourly Wage

Why do your employees want to employ at your company? It’s simple. They want a salary or an excellent wage to pay their bills. Here comes a problem: Your employees will not stand for long if you don’t pay them competitive base salaries or hourly wages, your top talent will come under the radar of your competitors, and they will steal your ideal employees from you.

Low salaries are one of the key reasons that lead to quick turnover. An employer is responsible for keeping an employee happy at the workplace. That’s good — you keep them satisfied by providing equal opportunities for growth, but what if they are not growing financially — obviously, they will look for better opportunities elsewhere.

Without a doubt, salary is an excellent motivator for new and existing hires. It is the big reason people love to come to your company every day, they put their best efforts and work hard to take your company to the next level.

According to a recent Glassdoor survey, “45% of people leave their jobs because of low and non-competitive salaries.”

So, if you want to improve your company’s employee retention rate, always offer them a competitive base salary or hourly wages, and they will accompany in your journey towards success and prosperity.

8. Celebrate Wins

Celebrate your employees’ wins, even by small in size. Employees love to feel appreciated; they feel ready to put their best when employers celebrate their victories.

What does motivate an employee to have a good time at any company or workplace?

Encouragement, appreciation, and positive feedback from the employer(s).

                                                  “Happy employees, Happy Workplaces.”
 

A day is celebrated every year in the USA known as ‘Employee Appreciation Day.’ In 2020, it will be on Friday, March 6. It is the right time for you to cherish this moment and appreciate your employees for all the best they have done for you.

Rest assured: Celebrating your employees’ wins will boost engagement, collaborative efforts, and creativity.

9. Build an Environment that Fosters Constructive Mental Health

Poor mental health is the #1 indicator of a bad working environment. Absenteeism, burnout, and lack of motivation are signposts that your employees are not fitting in. They are on the verge of erupting their lava of missed deadlines, failures, and disappointments on you.

Don’t let the destructive mental health of your employees spoil your internal environment. But don’t forget — their vulnerability shows your incompetency to manage human capital.

If your company is USA-based, you should remind your employees to take advantage of EAP (Employee Assistance Program), an employee benefit program started in the 1930s to curb industrial alcoholism has helped millions of people. So, why don’t you or your employees benefit from it? A business owner or an employer should help his employees to seek EAP for better mental health and overall well-being.

Learn More: Could Retention Be More Important Than Recruitment in 2020Opens a new window

That’s why; you need to build an environment that fosters constructive mental health. Following are five key ways to maintain a mentally healthier environment:

  1. Make wellness your chief priority.
  2. Be a Mentor, NOT a boss.
  3. Discuss mental health in the workplace and remove the stigma.
  4. Promote a work-life balance

With the correct implementation of these strategies at the right time, surely, you will be able to keep your best employees, and they won’t give up on you at the time of difficulties and hardships. Because you pay them well, they feel motivated; your feedback lets them learn new things, and so much more.

Do you have any strategies in mind to retain employees? Let us know on FacebookOpens a new window LinkedInOpens a new window , or TwitterOpens a new window

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