5 Ways To Ensure Better Employee Retention

The process of finding and interviewing candidates to single out the best employee is long and arduous.

Unfortunately, since workplace turnover has been increasing in recent years, companies are always hiring.

Each time the hiring process starts anew, your company wastes precious time and money. This is why you need to look at effective ways of retaining your existing employees.

 Keeping your employees happy requires a much smaller investment than constantly hiring new ones, and a motivated workforce will be much more productive.

The following steps will help your company build a satisfied and loyal workforce.

5 Ways To Ensure Better Employee Retention

1. Improve Your Onboarding Practices

You need skilled and experienced employees, but you also need employees you can engage and motivate to grow with their peers and scale along with your company.

Creating a good match for your culture, mission, and values are paramount. This is achieved through employee onboarding, a continual practice that ensures full assimilation.

The more time, money, and energy you invest in onboarding, the lower your turnover rate will be. According to the SHRM Foundation’s report, onboarding boosts retention by 69%.

What successful onboarding does is make new employees excited about being a part of an organization. Onboarding should also provide proof that accepting the job offer was a good choice.

Most of all, it should make new employees feel welcome and appreciated.

You can improve your onboarding practices by asking your recent hires about their first professional experience with your brand. Take a survey or use a quiz software to analyze answers.

2. Hire for Attitude, Train for Skill

A huge trend in hiring is searching for people who are a cultural fit. If you recruit people who are already a good match for your company, onboarding will be much easier.

Although the global talent pool is vast and ample with opportunities, bear in mind that education, experience, and skills mean little if a hire does not share your company’s values.

Instead, hire for attitude and train for skill.

In other words, have your recruiters evaluate talent based on the proposition that who they are as a person counts for as much as what they know about your industry or niche.

An employee’s attitude is a window to the future – the more positive and flexible it is, the more opportunities it will create. Commitment to excellence is the only trait that matters.

Not only will this approach allow you to tap into a wider pool of candidates, but more importantly, it will lead you to people who are eager to learn and contribute to your goals.

3. Let Your Current Employees Help

Your overall culture, as well as the everyday dynamics of your workforce, is highly unique. Both must be taken into consideration when looking for the best cultural fit.

Your recruiters may be well-equipped for conveying these values to potential hires, but they still have too little time for getting familiar with all the candidates’ strengths and weaknesses.

Just like everyone else, they are prone to errors.

Your current employees have firsthand experience with your culture as well. Additionally, they also know all the strengths and weaknesses of their friends.

On average, companies retain 45% of referred employees after two years.

Nobody understands your company’s goals and success strategies better than the goal-getters and over-achievers among your existing workforce. Be sure to ask them for help.

4. Rethink Your Job Requirements

Strict hiring criteria only narrow down your opportunity pool.

Though low application rates may not be a problem at first, what you may not realize is that they increase the risk of hiring the wrong person for the job.

Instead of employing a bad fit and having to retroactively work on retention strategies, think about rethinking your narrow job requirements in the first place.

Diversifying your employment models is always a good idea. It allows you to tap into a wider talent pool but also to cater to the various needs of modern-day employees.

Remote work, for instance, continues to surge in popularity.

Allowing employees to choose where they will work from and when helps establish a so-called “results-only work environment.” In these environments, turnover rates are significantly lower.

In other words, this would mean becoming a more flexible, employee-centric organization that cares about work-life balance and trust employees to work on their own terms.

5. Create an Employee-Centric Culture

 Creating an employee-centric culture doesn’t mean you have to do everything from scratch. The only thing you need to do is make your work environment more comfortable and meaningful.

These are only some of the tried and tested ideas:

• Never forget to recognize their accomplishments.
• Encourage open communication and collaboration.
• Provide ongoing guidance, and not only to new hires.
• Hold everyone to the same level of accountability.
• Keep your employees engaged and incentivized.

Most importantly, don’t hide from your employees behind the closed doors but establish yourself as a leader who listens to people and is open to continual improvement.

You’re only five steps away from being at the helm of a healthy organization that people love working for. Follow them closely, and your employees will feel proud of being a part of your team.

Ultimately, care is the only retention strategy you need to make your employees engaged, motivated, and satisfied, so keep tending to their professional needs and fostering their development.

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Angela White  is an ed-tech enthusiast with a passion for writing. Specifically, she writes in the areas of product research and marketing using quizzes and surveys. She is a researcher at a brand that’s known for creating delightfully smart tools called ProProfs Quiz Maker.

 

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