Being unhappy or dissatisfied with your work situation sucks. It affects every area of your life and can affect your mental health and wellbeing. This unhappiness and dissatisfaction makes employees look elsewhere for work.
The most common reasons are:
- Lack of career development opportunities
- Poor management
- Bad recruitment decisions
- Low salary
- Unappealing company culture
- Lack of flexible working options
- Feeling overworked and under-appreciated
- Bullying, harassment or discrimination
- Poor performance
As an employer, it’s important to monitor your employee turnover rate regularly. If those metrics rise, it’s a warning sign that something’s not right.
The employee turnover rate shows how many people leave a company. It’s the percentage of the total employees who’ve left within a certain time period. It’s an important non-financial KPI for your business.
What are the 4 Pillars of Employee Retention?
The work environment has changed. People are no longer enamoured by incentives like a ping pong table and a free coffee. It’s important to look at the package that you’re offering to your employees and the things that make them want to work for your business.
Employee engagement is a major factor in employee retention. Your employee engagement strategy needs to focus on these four pillars.
Employee Wellbeing
Today’s ‘always on’ work culture negatively impacts employees’ health and wellbeing. Constant stresses can lead to burnout. Helping employees to have a healthy work-life balance is beneficial to you and them.
There’s increasing evidence that employee wellness drives productivity, performance, job satisfaction, and importantly, intention to stay with the business.
How does that look? There are many employee incentives and perks like health insurance, reduced gym membership or on-site yoga classes. But it also includes taking an interest in the person and having regular chats to see how they’re doing.
Company Culture
Is your business a nice place to work? Have you created an inclusive, respectful, encouraging and pleasant workplace culture? We spend a lot of time at work and it’s important to make sure it feels good when you’re there. According to Forbes, nearly two-thirds of employees cite a good company culture as one of the main reasons they choose to stay with a business.
That work culture comes from the top. You want your employees to buy in to your company’s values and help to achieve its goals. So it’s crucial that you communicate clearly and regularly with people. When your employees resonate with these values, they feel a sense of belonging and a shared purpose which motivates them to work together to make your business successful.
Employee Development
Nobody wants to feel like they’re treading water at work. Showing that there are training and growth opportunities will really encourage employee engagement. Training shouldn’t just be for new employees. The chance to develop professional knowledge and skills should be open to everyone.
Training doesn’t always mean expensive courses. It can include initiatives like mentoring, skills sharing or learning lunches held internally. Check out the variety of online learning courses on LinkedIn too. Continual learning and professional development opportunities are valued by employees. Many potential new hires will form their decision on whether to take a new job on the potential for career development and training.
Performance reviews play a key part in this too. Have open conversations with team members to understand their career goals and ambitions. Then you can help employees to work towards them, be that through relevant mentorship, work experience or training programmes.
Rewards and Recognition
It’s really disheartening when your hard work goes unnoticed. It makes you feel unappreciated, under-valued and demotivated.
Employee recognition programs will make people feel appreciated and more satisfied. That recognition could be a shout out in a meeting, a post on the intranet, an email to the team and a congratulatory one-on-one chat.
Some companies have awards that are voted for by peers to recognise achievements, creative contributions and a positive impact. Creating a company culture of appreciation helps with employee satisfaction, better teamwork and a more positive work environment.
For some people, that reward and recognition is an understanding of their needs. Perhaps they need a flexible schedule or to remote work regularly due to caring responsibilities. Remote work wasn’t just for the pandemic, many people need that to enable a better work life balance. Others, however, prefer the in-person work environment. Recognising that and facilitating their preferred ways of working is a positive reward.
My Simple Ways to Reduce Employee Turnover in a Small Business
Want to know my #1 way to improve employee engagement and reduce employee turnover? Remember that they’re not just your employee. First and foremost, they’re a person. Treat them as an individual. These 8 suggestions really work, but they all relate to the person as an individual.
1. Understand them as a person: take a genuine interest in what they’re doing outside work. Learn the names of their family. Find what makes them tick. Are they into sport, music, art, fashion, food…? Use these to have personal conversations.
2. Allow time for rapport building: you may be busy, but it’s vital to make time to build relationships with your team members. Figure out their personality and style so you can work out the best ways to connect and communicate with them.
3. Let them to take their birthday off: you may gasp in horror at that thought, but I find that they usually make up the time anyway! The gesture will be really appreciated.
4. Remember that they’re not you: treat them as they’d be expected to be treated. Don’t expect them to work as you do. You may work 7 days a week, but don’t expect them to.
5. Acknowledge life events: remember their birthday. Send a card or flowers of condolence or congratulations. Be aware of their lives and what they’re going through.
6. Talk about salaries: communicate openly about potential salary increases. Giving competitive compensation (fair pay) is a major way to retain staff. Not paying it is a key reason for high employee turnover.
7. Discover their ambitions and intentions: ask where they want to be in a year’s time. Do they want the same role or a different one? This can help with your strategic planning. You can also evaluate the training or skills they need to work on to get there.
8. Share your vision: show them where the business is heading. You could talk through a future organisational chart and suggest where they fit in. This helps them to feel a sense of belonging and be motivated to work towards that goal.
Time to Say Goodbye
Sometimes, it’s the right time for an employee to move on. Employee attrition is inevitable. You can’t make every employee stay, and nor should you. But understanding why employees leave is important for developing an effective employee retention strategy
Offboarding – the process of ending the employment of a departing employee – can be as important as the onboarding process. In an exit interview, your human resources person needs to get honest insights into why the person’s leaving and their employee experience. It’s valuable information.
Want to Improve Employee Retention in Your Business?
Do you have a healthy employee retention rate in your business? Are you worried about the number of people leaving? Let me help to evaluate your business and the reasons for low retention. I have loads of experience in this area and I’d love to help you.
Keep your top talent happy and improve employee engagement and retention. My coaching sessions can equip you with effective strategies to improve your business and benefit your teams. Contact me to find out more.
