As an employer, finding and hiring the right people is only half the battle. Keeping employees happy, engaged, and employed by you is the other half, and arguably the harder one. When you’ve invested time, resources, and energy into scouting out the perfect fit for a position, the last thing you want to see is that employee leaving after a few months of working together.
If you’re looking for ways to improve employee retention, you’ve come to the right article. We have listed 5 tips for improving employee retention below.
1. Recognize outstanding employees formally and informally
Everyone wants to feel like people see their hard work. For many people, this is a major form of validation and satisfaction. When your employee retention rates are low, it could be due to low morale.
One simple way to boost morale is starting an “Employee of the Month” board or a similar internal recognition for exceptional work. This gives star employees a chance to feel proud of their efforts. It also helps with retaining hard-working, committed employees who might leave if they feel underappreciated.
2. Review and apply exit interview feedback
As quantumworkplace.com points out, if you take exit interviews seriously, you’ll see them as an opportunity to improve as an employer. When employees bring up issues in the exit interview, listen and address them. Although those employees might be leaving, fixing their complaints may prevent others from following them out the door.
3. Cultivate a supportive atmosphere in the workplace
Letting your employees know that they are supported at work will make them more likely to stay in your environment. If you’re looking for the best place to start with supporting your employees, try evaluating the current training practices, communicating clearly and effectively, and giving employees special rewards for working with you.
Something as simple as free coffee in the break room or as big as remote work options can make employees feel supported. This can help increase employee retention.
4. Foster career development
Frequently, good workers leave because they want to pursue movement in their professional lives. Having ambitious, motivated employees can be a great asset to your team, but you need to engage them to retain them.
By building meetings into each quarter that assess and implement goals for career development, you’ll have a better opportunity to retain employees who might leave for options that offer the same level of growth.
5. Pay your employees fairly
As blog.hubspot.com’s article “18 Strategies to Increase Employee Retention” explains, “LinkedIn’s Global Talent Trends Report from 2020 found that companies rated highly in providing fair compensation had a 56% lower rate of attrition.”
Employees want to receive fair compensation based on their experience, education, and industry standards. If you can’t offer that to your employees, you’ll lose them to an employer who will. It’s an unfortunate reality of the competitive job market, but if you position yourself to compete in terms of pay, your employee retention rate will increase.