How to Retain Your Best Employees?

The most expensive outgoing of an organization is its employees, making employee engagement crucial. Salaries, benefits, Human Resource Management and the infrastructure to accommodate them makes the most expensive chunk of your business. Research and case studies show that training a newly recruited employee takes 6.2 (sometimes more) months to break even. This means that every time an employee leaves an organization, it takes a little over six months only to get the replacement trained and ready.

Your top employees, your organization’s best, are not replaceable. When the company’s top employees leave, it affects external and internal relationships, starting a domino effect that impacts the very core of your organization. Thereby, making employee motivation and employee compensation critical aspects of the organization’s employee retention strategy.

To prevent scenarios of employee retention demands changes in how you treat all your employees, especially the superstars. An internal HR professional or an external human resources partner can design your company’s retention strategies. If you are an HR professional and have been sensing job dissatisfaction in the team, this read is meant for you.

Hire right

Hiring the right employee must be the first step in Human Resource Management. Attract apt job hunting candidates with the right, updated and comprehensive job descriptions. Those conducting the recruitments must assess applicants thoroughly to ensure their personality and skills are a great fit for the profile and organization’s culture. For example, if yours is a service industry, recruit employees who will understand and enjoy servicing. If you are hiring for managerial positions, it is critical to employ trained professionals who have handled teams before. And, if you are seeking freshers, it helps to partner with the placement cells of colleges and universities.

Promote appropriately and pay properly

When your top employees do what makes a difference, acknowledge it. One way to tell that you care is by giving them a promotion. This shows them that you recognize their efforts to aid organization efficiency and profitability, motivating the others to go above and beyond too. Promotion goes a long way in employee motivation and employee satisfaction. If your top employees feel that there are no growth opportunities for them, they will want to apply to better jobs/positions someplace else. If you can help them gain additional skills and use them to progress their careers, they will be more likely to stay with you longer.

To retain the best of your employees, you must also pay them a little more than industry standards. Employee compensation is a great motivation and must top your organization’s employee retention strategies. We don’t suggest ridiculously high salaries. But a package that is at or a little below the standard market rates for that particular position shows employees that they may not be truly valued.

Encourage and implement feedback

Most employers do not realize that taking feedback is great for employee satisfaction. It is important to communicate with employees to make them feel significant and connected. People want to be heard today and a lack of taking or working on their feedback makes them feel ignored, leading to job dissatisfaction. It will help greatly if, as an employer or HR professional, you conduct periodic interviews to find out what they are feeling and how are things within the organization.

Listening to them is a great first step towards employee retention and employee satisfaction. It shows them that you value their thoughts and concerns. Involving their feedback in decision-making goes a long way in employee engagement and employee retention. You need not implement every feedback and/or suggestion, but changing whatever you can show them that their input was valued.

Encourage creativity and innovation

Empower your best employees with the resources and time to try out new ideas. While it is great for employee engagement, it may also start an additional revenue stream for you. Some people really love to create and get innovative. Allowing your workforce to opportunities to do so, benefits every person involved.

Create a work environment that matters

A great work environment is one where people of all diverse backgrounds and genders feel included. Celebrating diversity plays an important role in employee motivation and employee retention. Also, employees always want to work where they enjoy. Hence, more and more companies look for office spaces that looks and feels interesting and motivating, making it rather attractive for employees, thus, aiding employee engagement and avoiding job dissatisfaction.

Prioritize work-life balance

This is now a need of the hour. Work-life balance is more important than ever before. While employee engagement activities make for great retention strategies, be conscious about not keeping them occupied for too long, as your employees, most likely, have an active personal life too. If they are consistently coming in early, working non-stop and leaving really late, they will reach their brink. This pushes them to start searching for and applying to other jobs.

Additionally, to increase employee motivation, allow your top employees some work from home days annually. Working remotely is the type of flexibility employees today want. This is especially true for working parents. While remote working may not keep your employees busy for the exact stretch of hours as a workday in office, this gives them the opportunity to take ample breaks, do other things that are important to them, while ensuring that fruitfully manage work outside their regular work hours.

While the traditional lines between an employee’s professional and personal lives are very distinct, employers and HR professionals must try to understand details about an employees’ personal life. This will help you plan their work from home schedules when the need arises.

Do not micromanage

Micromanagement is disastrous. Give your workforce clear instructions and then allow them ample space to go about meeting their targets in a manner that is productive to them and efficient to the organization. Allowing them to deal with their work differently than you would, shows them that you trust them and their methods.

Great employees always know what to do and when to do it. Sending them constant reminders is a sheer sign of micromanagement that will lead them straight out of your door to seek another’s. Once an employee reaches a certain point in their career or association with you, give them a project or task and leave them be. Trust them to complete the said task without looking over their shoulder constantly. Be available to clarify their doubts but do no more. They are most productive when they are given the space needed to work independently.

It is painful for the workforce and an organization when a top employee leaves. But the good news is, it can be prevented. Making the aforementioned changes and identifying some more can increase employee engagement and employee retention among your workforce. If you need help with this, a recruitment or hiring partner can always help out.