5 Ultimate Employee Retention Strategies You Should Follow

What If Your Key Employee Decides To Leave The Organization At The Crucial Stage Of Your Business?

The consequences are definitely going to cost you more than what you think.

It is utterly difficult to find another potential employee in this competitive business era.

You will need to develop retention strategies in the early stages itself to hold employees on whom you’ve worked hard to get in.

Most of the CEO’s and business owners think that retention is based on Salary hikes and high incentives. Yes, they will definitely encourage and motivate an employee to stick around with the company for a certain period. But, that is certainly not enough to retain your best employees.

Along with the monetary benefits, you will also need to work on things which are not monetary in nature.

Here Are The 5 Best Employee Retention Strategies

Create Opportunities For Growth

There is no way that the potential employee will work for you for the long term when there is no opportunity for him to grow, even when you are providing a good salary package. You have to be in his/her shoe to understand this.

You need to comprehend the goals of the employee directly by asking him or through other means.

You, as a CEO or owner of the business, can mentor & help them to grow and expand in their respective field.

Give Room For Creativity

Create an open communication opportunity if possible between employees and management. Conduct regular meetings and give them an opportunity to talk and share ideas they have regarding any product, project, or service.

This will allow an employee to be more involved in the company and will make them work with more determination.

This method will not only help in retaining employees, It also helps the founder and the management to get more broad ideas about their strategies for improving their product or service.

Be The Best

“Employees don’t quit jobs, they quit managers” ~ Steve Miranda

Consider any world class leader, be it Elon musk or Steve jobs. They all have one similar quality which makes people die to work for them. That is integrity. Try to instill this quality and stick with your moral principles.

Nobody wants to work for a looser or any below average company. Be the best in whatever service or product you are providing. Everybody wants to work for a winner. It also instils a sense of pride if you are working for a top company.

Go Beyond Pay-Check

Foster the employee development by training them to learn a new job skill or provide funds for coaching classes and certifications.

Many companies reimburse their employees further higher education to retain the best candidates. This method works virtually all the time.

Find out the best talent and promote them to the new positions and reward them. This will motivate other employees as well to work hard and give them a confidence that they will be rewarded for their hard work.

Recognition

Give your employees the recognition they deserve for their hard work. Ensure that it is authentic and you totally mean it.

Giving a gift card or lunch with the boss works fine for the certain level. This approach completely misses the point of recognition and comes nowhere near to it. People crave for recognition and acknowledgement for the work they have done.

Implement these strategies right away and break rules for your exceptional talent.

How to Improve employee Retention rate?

Why Retention is important: 

Turnover costs for the company are huge and they are not getting any smaller, the bigger the cost the more of a reason it gives you to retain your employees. 

Why do we have huge costs for turnover? 

Well, these few pointers might help answer that question: 

• Replacing an employee includes a chunk of company time and money 
• Morale drops for the employees who are left behind 
• Productivity of the new employee during recruitment and onboarding stages is reduced 
• Loss of company knowledge and tenure. 

As a matter of fact, retaining an employee saves companies one and a half to two times the cost of hiring and training a new employee. Companies can also see results beyond the hiring and training cost when they retain an employee. 

An effective employee retention would lead to: 

• Enhanced customer experience 
• Momentum and consistency of work is maintained across all teams 
• Stronger work culture is maintained (leads to employee engagement) 

With low turnover and high engagement, companies can more easily attract the right talent for the right roles. In other words, it’s in the best interest of the organization to keep the employee engagement high and retain the employees. 

Hire the right people

When you hire the right person for the right job, the employee will never feel the need to switch or move or exit the company; when you love your job, you seldom get the thought of wanting a change. Also going with the one of the leadership principles of Amazon “Hire and Develop the best” where recruiters are encouraged to hire the people who are the best fit for a job, when you are good at something you enjoy doing it and people recognize your skills, this cycle of doing a good job and getting recognition for it keeps a positive energy that one will never get tired of. 

Create a culture that gives recognition & feedback

Employees want to feel valued for their work and efforts. Creating a culture of feedback and recognizing good work may seem like a small step but goes a long way, it boosts employee morale and keeps engagement high. It also ensures employees that the organization cares for their good work and is putting in the efforts to develop them and help them grow. 

Acting on the feedback from exit surveys and implementing changes

Even though we are trying to retain an employee as much as we can, it’s not always a success, as there are many factors that play into why an employee wants to exit the organization. It is important to take the exit survey feedback seriously and implement the necessary changes so that you do not lose more employees for the same reasons. When employees see that they are being heard and the organization is taking their feedback seriously and is putting in the efforts to work on it for their betterment, they feel valued and will be proud of the organization they work for. 

Create/offer opportunities for growth

Let’s face it, nobody likes to invest time and energy into something that would eventually hit a dead-end, creating opportunities for growth helps employees set professional goals for themselves and motivates them to be more productive in order to achieve that goal. This helps both the employee and the organization simultaneously. This also indicates that all the hard work that the employees put in will pay off. 

Flexible work assignment

we all know the importance of a good work-life balance i is, we wouldn’t like it if we went home and realized that we have to give all of our time in the day to our work. Not to mention that we need some personal time to recuperate and relax. That being said, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that employees look for work places that offer flexible work assignments where they leave work behind after their clock out and focus on things in their personal lives.

Conclusion

Following the above tips, you may improve your employee retention rate. It is important to keep in mind that your employees need to be treated with respect and while it is necessary to not let them become complacent it is also important to recognize and reward their hard work and efforts as the employees are the driving force of any organization or business.