Retention is better than cure – keeping the team together
If we have learned one thing from the pandemic, it’s the importance of employee retention.
High staff turnover is a nightmare for both future planning and stability as well as its cost implications.
We’ve therefore come up with 8 effective solutions to enable you to keep your existing team members happy and avoid a talent drain!
- Don’t take them for granted
You interview candidates before employing them. You hopefully conduct exit interviews to find out why they’re leaving. But do you ever interview the loyal ones who have been with you some time?
You might not mean to, but long-term employees can become regarded as part of the furniture and be taken for granted as a result.
This is complacency and you are asking for trouble if you have allowed this attitude to take hold.
- Ask them!
Getting feedback from your long-term employees makes a lot of sense. You must be doing something right, because they have stayed working with you!
Which, of course, makes them the perfect people to give you properly constructive feedback, because they know how both you and the company operates. And if you do a job, who is better placed to make suggestions about how it can be done better?
Whether it be an anonymous questionnaire or a more formal interview or discussion, it makes a lot of sense to ask the question.
Of course it goes far beyond the nature of the job itself, it provides a valuable insight into your whole working culture from the perspective of those who help to create it.
- Be flexible with their working preferences
The workplace shouldn’t be schooldays revisited, you are dealing with adults so treat them as such.
Adopting a collaborative approach works far better than dictating or lecturing to people.
Don’t take a blanket approach to working arrangements. Some people only flourish in the buzz of the office environment, so they should they be left in isolation at home?
Equally, if someone’s work/life balance is better suited to home working, why make it a problem when it needn’t be?
It obviously matters how well somebody performs their role, but does it really matter where the work is done so long as standards are being maintained?
A flexible approach shows real consideration, and loyalty is a two-way street.
- Don’t offer newbies more for the same
If you really want to annoy your current employees, appoint someone at the same level and pay them more than your current team members for doing the same job.
Loyalty is a great quality but it doesn’t pay the bills. You can’t expect to retain people if a competitor in the same sector offers far more for doing the same job.
Is your package up to scratch? If it isn’t, all you are doing is training people for your competitors to take advantage of.
- Offer the opportunity for progression
There’s no more depressing feeling when you have reached the top of your salary band and there’s nowhere else to go, except elsewhere.
People often move to pastures new because they can only move sideways or stand still with their current employer. If someone is worth keeping they deserve the opportunity to continue to grow their career with you.
If they’re that good, they’ll get a better offer elsewhere if you aren’t able to offer it to them yourself.
- Training and upskilling
People who enjoy their job normally jump at the chance to upskill and become even better at it.
Do you offer the ability to learn and grow through training and qualifications?
It’s the loyalty thing again, if you have looked after your employees in terms of training and development they are far more likely to stay than if they have been left to learn on the job or arrange it off their own bat.
- Be social media savvy
Social media can be a great way to make all your team pull together in a common cause, namely the good of your company.
Some owners are suspicious about their team members posting on social media, but if handled properly it can do your business nothing but good.
We aren’t talking about spending all day on SM platforms to the exclusion of work, sending inappropriate messages, of course!
But giving people the opportunity to post and interact shows your business in a very good light.
It shows you trust them to be good ambassadors for the business, for starters.
Some people take to SM like a duck to water, and leads can start to arrive that would never have arrived if somebody hadn’t liked a post or a comment.
Your company gets a reputation for being a fun place to work when you trust people to act on your behalf like this.
So long as the performance of the key tasks doesn’t suffer, it’s something to be encouraged.
It adds fun to the working day, the prospect of additional business and really helps all team members to buy in to your common purpose.
Engaged colleagues are motivated colleagues.
- The personal touch
Do you remember the little personal details?
Birthdays, wedding anniversaries, children’s birthdays, things that really matter to people.
Sending birthday cards and gifts, maybe a birthday day off policy, Christmas presents, all help to make people feel valued and appreciated.
People who feel genuinely cared about are far less likely to be looking for appreciation elsewhere.
An easy life….
It’s a competitive job market and there are plenty of exceptional candidates out there….
It’s better, though, to recruit when you want to as opposed to needing to all the time.
Hopefully, our pointers will ensure that you retain your best people and aren’t constantly having to replace them!