Top 10 Ways of Retaining Good Employees
1) There is a strong correlation between benefits satisfaction and job satisfaction.
Benefits are an excellent way to attract good employees. Make sure to fully explain the benefits that your employees are receiving. Too often employees who are hired are given all the details about the job / company and benefits at once that they can miss the true relevance of what they are going to receive by being an employee of your company.
2) A realistic approach to Work / Life balance
Many employees regardless of age believe in the value of work-life balance. With a growing popularity of emails and blackberry’s at any hour the concept of work / life balance sounds more like a buzz word then a reality. Some companies have banded the use of blackberry’s while others have policies around their use. Decide where your company stands on this topic and know that it is impossible for even your best producing staff members to be contributing 24 hours a day. Implementing policies for the use of these devices will result in positive feedback from your staff.
Honor holidays, weekends and employees personal vacations. How often have you gone away only to have been made to feel guilty for doing so? Employers that encourage personal time will enhance the well-rounded nature of your work force.
3) Encourage Executive Involvement
Even large companies can do this well. Simple things such as walking down the hall, participating in a conversation in the cafeteria or dropping in to say hello on a group is a great way of being present and involved with your staff. Having an executive presence can answer the biggest questions that unsatisfied employees ask themselves; Why do I matter?
4) Workplace culture
Celebrate diversity by bringing in foods from the culture of different groups of employees. Have them show and talk about themselves. Assign monthly lunch time party’s where employees can come together on a common ground.
There are countless examples of fun, inexpensive ways of creating culture in the work place. It can be as simple as a 10:30am cheer to “treat” Friday’s. Think outside of the box and good things will happen.
5) Enhance Employee Education
Offering to cover some of the tuition costs for an employee to obtain greater education will benefit not only the employee but also the employer and can be used as a talent management strategy. Studies show that employees (especially younger generations) will not stay unless they are being challenged. Employees that challenge themselves by attending evening courses could produce better results. Providing new experiences and ways of solving problems with also benefit the employer in obtaining more engaged employees.
6) Going Green may be more meaningful to some employees than a catch phrase
Encourage your employees to think and act on ways to improve the environmental impact of their corporation. Many people feel very strongly about this concept therefore tap into those employees that are mindful of the corporate impact and support their initiatives. These types of employees can be extremely loyal and fostering this type of work environment can produce a feeling of pride in their employer.
7) Reverse Mentoring for younger employees
This is such an interesting concept and can be so beneficial to both sides of the mentor relationship. Generational differences are transforming the work place and significantly impacting retention of new employees. Reverse mentoring is a type of workplace mentorship where the mentor is younger than his or her mentee and with substantially less seniority in an organization. The environment is conducive to knowledge sharing.
Use Social Networking tools to your advantage
Develop a facebook page where you have a few employees write successful and inspirational stories about the company. This can be an area where you load company pictures and organize social events.
Have business units blog on what they work on and what the challenges of their positions can be. Offer an “Ask the manager section,” watch the interest in company involvement increase.
9) Do not rush “new hire” training
Allow new hires to spend time acquiring knowledge about the company and job shadowing with their colleagues in similar positions. Training is directly related to employee retention.
10) Trust
Employees that can be trusted should be trusted. Long gone are the days where micromanagement styles ruled. Asking for accountability is a great way to demonstrate employer trust without overseeing every task within a project. Many employees want to be trusted to make discussions that relate to their job, re-enforce the feeling that if ever an employee is concerned that they can come to you. Try asking employees what they have done to accomplish their goals and watch how quickly projects will be taken care of.
Tags: Employee Retention