Retaining employees has consistently been the biggest challenge for companies. There have been so many studies, surveys and even articles written on how to do this effectively. Most of them are very useful and organizations can apply those ideas to their own context. A good human resources course covers employee retention as an in-depth topic.
Let us look at some simple rules which can help you get your employee retention approach right.
- Remember to assess engagement – Self-motivation is the biggest reason for employees to stay in a firm. So if you are actively assessing their engagement levels, and using the results to define steps for increasing it, your employee retention approach is on the right track. It will give you a clear picture of which employees will remain with the firm and how you need to focus on retaining them.
- Know the motivators – Getting insights into what motives an employee especially your top talent is very important. Some people value empowered work culture, others prefer being rewarded well. Knowing this helps in retaining employees using the right tools and initiatives.
- Keep a check on work climate – A lot of studies have shown that people leave managers, not an organization. Also, they tend to leave because of bad work climate or a hostile environment. Tracking these is important for you to be able to anticipate and hence avoid employee attrition. It will also be the basis for training managers who need to be sensitized to skills such as leading teams.
- Ask your teams to share feedback – Encourage open dialogue, idea boxes and discussions in your organization. Asking your teams to share continual feedback is a good way to become aware of what might be the situation at the ground level. Sometimes we design retention strategies without knowing the actual issues. Direct feedback such as this can help to reduce such problems.
- Be aware of the opportunity/replacement cost – Calculating the cost of replacement of an experienced employee, or the opportunity cost due to loss of business that the employee could have got for you, is a good exercise to undertake. When you calculate and monitor these costs, you realize that this is a huge expense for companies. Hence retaining an existing employee is always a better route than to hire a new one.
These are some simple tips for employee retention that all organizations can follow with ease. They are generic and applicable to all types of companies.