Employee retention is your organisation’s ability to keep your employees, as their expectations and ambitions evolve during their time in the business. It promotes the health and success of your business. A strong employee retention strategy can save you from productivity losses and ensures that valued workers remain employed.
The foundation of a good retention strategy is not focusing on why employees resign, but focus on how to create a workplace that they won’t want to leave.
The reason why people stay in a role provides unique insight for leaders into the elements of work that are so exciting, fulfilling, and invigorating that they outweigh any negative aspects of the job.
–Stefan Wissenbach Founder & CEO of Engagement Multiplier
A workplace where people feel respected, challenged and fulfilled will have a significantly better employee retention rate at the end of the day.
Why do employees stay in a job?
Your company culture can affect whether employees want to stay or leave. In one survey, 72% of workers cited company culture as a factor influencing their decision to work at a certain company.
In her Forbes article, Christina Comaford discusses the book ‘Love ‘Em or lose ‘Em: Getting good people to stay. She lists the ten conditions known as the “stay factors” which the authors believe are necessary to keep employees with their employers. The ten factors are:
. Exciting work and challenge
. Career growth, learning, and development
. Working with great people
. Fair pay
. Supportive management/good boss
. Being recognised, valued, and respected
. Benefits
. Meaningful work and making a difference
. Pride in the organisation, its mission, and its product
. Great work environment and culture
It’s evident that healthy and engaging workplace culture can be a major factor in staff retention. A less engaging negative work environment may lead to unhappy disinterested employees and therefore high staff turnover which is exactly what we want to avoid.
2 things you can do to improve retention.
The end goal is to effectively create a workplace which people don’t want to leave.
- Stay Interviews
As an employer, one of the first things that you could do is to conduct stay interviews. Stay interviews are designed to identify why a business’s high performers and key workers choose to stay in their roles.
It can give important insight into what your employees value the most about their jobs and also what factors they are unhappy with. They help to build trust and give employees the opportunity to openly communicate their experiences, ideas and needs.
After conducting stay interviews an employer should have a solid understanding of the adjustments that need making. Time should be allocated to specifically make these changes, improving ‘stay conditions’ and simultaneously improving your most valued employees’ work experiences.
- Adopt a reskilling strategy
In the long run, reskilling strategies can improve employee engagement and retention. Reskilling your current employees holds many benefits. Including:
.Saving money
.Keeping a loyal workforce
.Improving morale
Reskilling is important regarding employee retention as it is attractive to those who are thinking about changing their jobs and career. Not only does it improve an employee’s desire to stay at their current workplace, but they are more likely to demonstrate stronger problem-solving abilities, higher level of productivity and better performance overall.
As an employer, you may not even realise some of the issues that your employees encounter day to day. This is why assessing your workforce and gathering feedback is imperative.
How will your business benefit from employee retention?
When you focus on your organisation’s improvement of ‘stay conditions’ you will create a gateway to sustainable employee retention. Keeping your current employees around for the right reasons, and genuinely investing in their personal development and growth under your company creates a fantastic foundation for the business. Upon this you create the opportunity to recruit further talent and achieve profitable growth.
Is employee retention something that you have been struggling with as an employee? We offer a free employee engagement tips guide where we cover key areas you will find useful. We share the top 5 areas that employees feel could improve their employee experience and employee engagement.
Click the link above to learn:
.The top 5 areas employees feel businesses could improve
.Our recommendations to improve these areas in your business
.How all areas can be improved by your internal team without large investment costs.
Are you looking to improve your business’s employee retention? Don’t hesitate to get in touch and see how we can help you.
Email us at [email protected] or call the office on 0161 222 3142.
