Employee retention means keeping your employees productive, engaged and happy. It can reduce turnover of staff, save money on recruitment, create a more collaborative and comfortable environment and you can feel secure that you have the best talent working with you.
So, if you want to learn new ways to improve your employee retention, read on!
Being clear with your employees right from the start of their time with you is a key way to ensure they want to stay. This goes right back to the job advert and description you write for any vacancies. It’s essential that you’re honest and concise about what the job entails; this doesn’t mean that you need to list out everything they might possibly do whilst working with you, just ensuring that you’ve covered all the essential basics. If you’ve hired a Marketing Executive and only told them they’ll be handling email marketing, they might not be inclined to stay if they start and find out they have to cover all social media marketing too!
Anonymous Associate Satisfaction Surveys (ASAT) can be conducted to gauge employees’ views regarding what they feel is working well for them and what can be improved. This can range from the benefits your organisation offers, the type of work/workloads people have, or how collaboration works, e.g. team meetings, 1-1s, reviews, etc. This can increase employee engagement and show employees that you’re committed to listening to them, taking their thoughts on board and embedding their ideas into the way you work.
Recognition and reward are essential factors in employee retention. To begin with, regular chats and catch-ups can be a simple but effective way to show employees that you care about them, both personally and professionally. It can also be a great way to get more from colleagues who may not feel as comfortable sharing opinions in larger groups. Looking at perks, staff socials are an excellent way to reward employees for their hard work whilst bringing everyone together and encouraging conversations between different teams and departments who would otherwise not have contact. Finally, awards evenings can act as a real boost to employee morale, providing teams with another occasion to join together and celebrate one another.
Every organisation has its own company culture but now is your time to truly shout about it! Showcase your dedication to your company culture with clear values, whether these are compassion and collaboration, caring for the environment or ensuring gender equality throughout your organisation. You can do this externally by posting pictures from company socials, taking videos from your office space, interviewing associates and writing about the events you’ve attended.
Post COVID lockdowns, flexible working policies covering both locations and hours are highly important to many people. A survey conducted in 2022 showed that 63% of workers chose flexibility as the benefit that matters the most to them. It doesn’t have to be a drastic change where everything is suddenly moved to remote working but small flexibilities here and there, such as allowing someone to start 15 minutes earlier and therefore leave 15 minutes earlier so they can do the school run or enabling employees to work from home one or two days a week to help them save money on dog walking. All these small things can make a big difference in your employees’ lives.
Training, learning and development opportunities are not only a great way to increase employee retention but will also result in a stronger workforce and better results for your organisation. By investing in your employees, you can show that you care about their careers and are dedicated to furthering their goals. They’ll feel encouraged to stay with you as they know you have them as one of your priorities and can progress in an environment where they feel able to thrive.
To showcase your employee retention strategies to new candidates, the majority of these can easily be implemented into your job advert or advertised on your careers site. At Webrecruit, we have an expert team of copywriters who can write personalised job adverts for you that encompass all these techniques and display them in the best possible way! Meanwhile, regular email updates, team meetings and 1-1s can be effective ways to introduce any new methods to your current employees.
