Employee retention – 9 tips to keep your people engaged and save a fortune on recruitment costs

Human Resources 17th March 2021

There’s no argument. Replacing employees is expensive. Whatever the size of your business, if you take into account everything from recruitment to onboarding, the cost of losing your people can be as much as twice an annual salary.

There may be no single silver bullet to fight employee turnover, but here’s a list of nine employee retention strategies that will help you re-engage and keep your top performers and save yourself a ton of hassle and money!

1. Find out why people are leaving – then fix it

With people, details matter. Has more than one employee quit claiming they were being treated unfairly? Are you being priced out by a competitor? Have those that you’ve lost been low performers?

You can find the answers to these questions through exit interviews and frank conversations with current employees. Take your exit interviews seriously – not just as a tick-box exercise. If you’re going to solicit feedback, then act on it.

2. Create a world-class onboarding process

Ensure you have a solid plan in place for your new employees’ first 30 days. Day one is really important. You could buy them a small gift or pay for a team breakfast. How about a personal note from the company founder? Use your imagination and think about what you would like if it were you spending your first day with the company. One or two small acts of kindness and inclusion will pay dividends in the long run.

3. Think carefully about meaningful employee engagement

Many employees feel little or no relationship between their day-to-day work and their employer’s goals. Is it any surprise that disengagement and employee turnover are on the increase? When employees can’t see the impact that they have on a business, it reduces any sense of purpose and productivity. Try re-imagining your goal-setting processes.

4. Are your people receiving positive feedback

Even the best managers forget to personally acknowledge employee achievement. In a recent blog, we wrote about employee recognition programmes. These will boost employee confidence and build the necessary trust in case the time comes for some negative feedback.

5. Communicate the shared vision

People feel engaged, valued, and loyal when they’re in the know. As much as possible, allow employees from all levels in your company to know where you’re going and how you plan to get there.

6. Perform regular compensation analyses

It’s common knowledge that pay is not the number one job satisfaction factor. But, clearly, it does matter. The way you compensate your employees needs to be both fair and competitive.

7. Provide opportunities for learning and development

Lack of access to growth opportunities is the fastest-growing reason people give for leaving jobs. In 2018, 61% of job seekers ranked career growth as most important when looking for new opportunities. ‘Growth opportunities’ could mean training, or it could mean promotion. The latter isn’t always possible, but many employees consider a sideways move just as valuable as an upward one. When given opportunities to develop new skills, quality employees leap at the chance.

8. Keep up with HR trends

To successfully retain employee, it’s important to be aware of the ways in which the world of work is changing and to adapt accordingly. One way is to sign up for The Grapevine – our regular, monthly newsletter.

9. Say ‘farewell’ well

In spite of your very best efforts, there will always be employees who leave, often on good terms, occasionally not. Even for the best places to work, it’s unrealistic to expect people to stay at the same company for decades. If one of your people receives a better offer, be happy for them! Then – get to work on fixing the problem of why you weren’t the better opportunity.

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Are you doing all you can to keep your employees? Are too many of them leaving? Save yourself the cost of recruitment. Work harder at keeping your people happily engaged. Here at Gravitas HR, we’ll support you with your employee retention strategy.

For straight-talking HR advice – 01604 763494

Or email – info@GravitasHR.co.uk

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