The Best Employee Retention Strategies

Are you one of the 91% of HR leaders concerned about employee turnover? Or perhaps you’re a senior manager who wants to do more to retain key skills in-house? Whatever your motivation for improving turnover and adapting your employee retention strategies, there are lots of actions you can take to boost employee morale and get those business-critical employees engaged and invested in your organization.

Why Does Employee Retention Matter?

In some industries, like retail and hospitality, staff turnover is expected, something built into their yearly resource planning. But for other industries, the tenure of your workforce can mean higher productivity, improved services and quality products, and greater efficiency.

However, staff turnover isn’t always a bad thing. A moderate level of staff turnover can revitalize teams and bring onboard fresh ideas and approaches that can breathe new life into your business. But when turnover becomes constant, it can dampen morale, and even damage your reputation with customers and vendors. Turnover can even begin to snowball as employees struggle with high workloads.

In summary, high turnover can:

• Cost your business money
• Damage your reputation
• Cause you to lose valuable knowledge and skills
• Cause you to lose out on business

On the other hand, the benefits of low employee turnover will strengthen your business for years to come. Concentrating on improving your employee retention strategies can:

• Reduce hiring and training costs
• Improve employee morale and company culture
• Lead to increased productivity
• Allow you to provide a better customer experience
• Give you access to greater employee expertise

Employee Retention Strategies To Build Into Your Workforce Planning

If you are experiencing high employee turnover or are worried about employee retention rates going forward, then try building these fantastic tips into your employee retention strategy:

1. Offer an Exceptional End-to-End Employee Experience

Make your employees feel valued and cared for throughout their time with your organization by considering the employee experience at every stage of the employee lifecycle. This means providing the best possible experience from hiring right through to the exit interview. Here are some quick tips for providing an end-to-end employee experience in your current internal hiring procedures:

• Remove unnecessary stages in your recruitment process
• Streamline your onboarding procedures
• Offer flexible working and benefits
• Set out clear goals and expectations
• Focus on integrating EDI into your company values
• Treat departing employees with care

2. Provide Exceptional Development Opportunities

A staggering 94% of employees say they would stay longer in a role if they felt the company was committed to investing in their learning and development. Developing learning and training programs, setting up partnerships with third-party training suppliers, etc., all demonstrate an investment in your workforce’s development, in return, they’ll be more committed to their roles.

Offer training opportunities, mentorship schemes, and long-term goal setting as well as demonstrate clear pathways to promotion. Deploy regular feedback processes, either via one-on-ones with their managers or through centralized employee satisfaction surveys, so you can get real-time data.

3. Celebrate Achievements

Companies and teams in a cycle of projects and deadlines can find it to let successes pass by unnoticed and unacknowledged. Have processes in place that allow you to celebrate your workforce’s achievements individually and as teams or departments. In-person thanks from senior leadership go a long way but don’t forget to offer more tangible rewards. You should also be leveraging congratulations as part of your employer branding through social media campaigns. This can be a great way to showcase a company culture of teamwork and demonstrate how much you value your employees’ contributions to success.

4. Embed Feedback at Every Level of Your Organization

Feedback is such a flexible tool that can help give employees structure and support and create a culture of transparency at every level of your business. Actionable feedback will help your employees understand what they are doing well and give them tangible areas on which to improve. When leadership gives feedback well it also helps employees feel they have access to the information they need to do their jobs. Giving employees the space to provide feedback to managers and senior leaders will help those people improve and will enable you to address any concerns early.

5. Act on Employee Feedback

Of course, all this feedback from one-to-ones, performance reviews, and even exit interviews is only useful to improve employee retention if you’re able to act on it! When employees fail to see results from the feedback, they give they feel unheard and undervalued. On the other hand, companies that regularly act on the feedback they receive and openly address employee concerns will see a decrease in turnover as employees feel a greater sense of security.

Improve Your Employee Retention With a Custom RPO Solution

Building employee retention strategies into your workforce management plan can be daunting, especially if your internal hiring infrastructure is trying to attract new talent as well. An RPO partner is the ideal solution, bringing you the people, processes, systems, and expertise to meet your retention goals and deliver exceptional support with your longer-term recruitment strategy. To discuss your talent acquisition requirements, book a call with one of our solution experts today.