Business owners worldwide have struggled in one way or another over the last eighteen months due to the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the main worries has been employee retention. HR departments, managers and owners have to think of the best ways to retain employees and keep their businesses running. Company culture, professional development and employee engagement all play a massive part in employee retention.
But what else can HR professionals, managers and leaders do to make employees more likely to stay?
86% of businesses are concerned about their top talent due to the impact of COVID-19. This means that businesses are trying to find ways to keep those employees. In some cases, they are looking at their practices to make sure they have happy content staff.
Wanting to attract, identify, develop, engage, retain and deploy the very best people in your organisation? Learn more about Talent Management here
What is Retention in the Workplace?
Employee retention focuses on the number of employees that remain with a company compared to how many leave. Money is not the key to keeping employees at their company, despite it being a common thought. There are many different things that businesses can do to help keep their staff.
During COVID, business owners have had to deal with a complete change. This was in how they operate, staff working from home, being furloughed, or reduced hours.
Now that the furlough scheme is coming to an end, HR managers and business owners need to understand how to bring everyone back safely.
Retention Strategies in your Workplace
There are plenty of ways that you can keep your employee retention rate up post-COVID. Employees deserve to know that they are valued, especially after a very tough year across all sectors. Using some of the below strategies can keep your employees happy, raise productivity and motivation, and grow your business.
There’s no doubt that employee retention strategies are getting more attention. And so, there are a myriad of ways to help keep retention up and stop the dreaded high employee turnover.
Get even more Employee Retention Techniques here
Investment in Employees
Using industry training and coaching can be a big factor in helping them decide to stay at your company. Giving employees the opportunities to grow and develop is the perfect way of letting them know that they are valued. Organisations that help staff improve their skills will always do better at keeping those employees. Employers who make sure that employees have the best opportunities for professional development are more likely to have happier team members who feel safe and secure in their job. Training staff is the most important thing leaders can do in the onboard process. Plus, offering new training to existing employees is a perfect way of keeping your workforce up-to-date.
Communicate
It’s easy to think, “well, of course, we communicate with our employees.”
But most employers and management teams forget that communication comes in so many different forms. Communications can mean anything from checking in on someone who might be having a hard time or dealing with business queries.
It’s important to keep people updated on developments in the business as soon as possible. This ensures that employees are aware of any changes that may occur before they happen. It never ends well when there are rumours around the office. It all could have been avoided by just talking to employees about possible issues.
Good communication will ultimately save you time, money and a high employee turnover.
Find out how to tie all these principles into your HR Strategy with our HR Talks chat with Matt Bullock, Director of People and Culture for Acorns Children’s Hospice
Employee Benefits Programmes
We don’t just mean health or medical insurance, sick pay and monetary bonuses, although these are good places to start. Using an employee benefits programme like the Petaurum Employee Perks Benefit Scheme is a good way of giving employees something back for their hard work. There are discounts on many household names and great offers for days out, holidays and more.
Obviously money is a huge factor of these things. However most benefit programmes, including ours, start from a couple of pounds per employee per month.
Making sure that you are paying your employees accordingly is also a huge part of employee retention, but be warned! Money doesn’t always make someone stay, a great company with good values, leadership and management will always help too.
Feedback
Yearly reviews often don’t work for the business or the employee. Performance is a dynamic and continuous cycle, therefore it is much better to have more regular conversations throughout the year to discuss how each employee is getting on. Are they exceeding your expectations? Think about how you will recognise and celebrate this. If they’re not meeting your expectations, understand why and help them get back on track.
This may be some training, extra support or removing some barriers – far better to do this in ‘real time’ than wait until an annual appraisal when the problem is likely to be much bigger! Having regular conversations is also a great way to get to know your staff better, what they do outside of work, what they like, what frustrates them. It’s a great opportunity for two-way feedback but remember that any feedback has been listened to and looked at by management
Mentorships
Getting members of staff involved in mentoring is a great way of making them feel valued. This could be for either other members of staff or students. They can help make a difference to someone which is important to both parties. Plus, they get the satisfaction of seeing someone grow under their guidance. It can boost confidence, performance and be effective for providing future talent if needed. Employee engagement in these mentorships is invaluable both to those mentoring and those being mentored.
Empower Responsible Employees
You may have some employees who are not yet fully experienced enough for management or supervisory roles yet. But, they are experienced in certain tasks such as accounts or customer facing roles. Letting them deal with those certain tasks and take responsibility for them will help those employees feel valued. It will also help with their career projection and development. Finally, it gives them recognition for the hard work that they have put in. Companies that take the time to get to know their employees well and work together for the long-term will retain more employees.
Supporting Little Successes
Employers who track successes, no matter how big or small, usually better understand their workforce. The people who consistently provide good work are often the most overlooked. Leadership teams often look at those who have a big success or those who are not doing. By supporting, rewarding and motivating those who keep on working and consistently, you create more motivated members of the team. Using performance indicators to help motivate those who maybe are struggling to keep up is also a good retention strategy. This is rather than blaming them for failure.
Help them look at what happened and see if there are underlying issues like training, management or personal development.
Say “Thank you”
It is obvious, but saying thank you regularly to employees is always going to go down well. Recognition of a job well done is appreciated by those feeling burnt out after the year of lockdowns and the constant back-and-forth of being a remote worker or having to come into the office. This creates a culture of feedback to workers, and you’ll see it eventually moving down through the chain of command. This leads to the next point.
Curb the Burnout
More and more employers are incorporating mental health days into their benefits. Businesses in the UK are currently more likely to provide mental health resources and assistance, wellness programmes, and an at-home office equipment allowance (as well as the UK government also providing this as part of the working from home scheme.
Helping employees to adopt a healthy work-life balance should be at the forefront of every business. This is along with helping employees figure out their flexible work arrangements. HR managers now have to look at how remote working might be good for some and not others. Also they should look at how they can implement new processes with management and senior leadership teams.
Using these strategies, you can help create a company that has a great retention rate, has happy employees who want to stay at the company and it will make it easier for you to find new hires once the world settles back into a normal routine.
Contact us today to discuss your HR needs, including Employee Retention Strategies and our Employee Benefits Programme.