How can you increase your employee’s retention? Believe it or not, many of the factors affecting employee retention have little to do with salary. Making your employees feel valued, supported, and motivated will ensure that they will want to stay with you and your company for the long haul.
Losing an employee is never fun, nor easy, and can cost your company a lot. When you consider hiring costs, such as interviewing, onboarding, training, etc, you know how valuable it is to keep your employees. Having a proper strategy in place to retain employees is always in your best interest.
So, how do you do that? Here are some things you can do to increase the likelihood that your employees will want to stay.
Understand What Motivates Your Employees
Everyone is motivated by all sorts of different factors. Some employees might be motivated by work/life balance or by the value of the work itself, while others might be motivated by external rewards, such as salary, bonuses, raises, or recognition.
You have to think about questions like, is this your employee’s first job? Are they planning on starting a family soon? Are they concerned about retirement and other long-term benefits?
To increase employee retention, it is important to understand not only what motivates your employees at this exact moment, but also to keep in mind how motivational factors are ever-changing. You need to remain on top of that. Make sure to do check-ins with your employees regularly. This way you can ensure that they are enthusiastic about their position and if they’re not, you can figure out ways to get them enthusiastic again before you lose them.
When employees are motivated, they are less likely to start looking for a better fit elsewhere. Knowing that is your best start in increasing employee retention.
Attach Meaning and Overall Purpose to the Work
Every single workplace imaginable has very tedious, but very necessary, grunt work or simple, repetitive tasks which need to be done. They’re unavoidable but unenjoyable. That’s why it’s essential that even these less glamorous aspects of every job are treated with reverence and gratitude.
You should also tell employees why the work is being done and why it is important. If a small task is simply in place to set up a larger one, make sure you help the employee responsible for this smaller task see the overarching purpose of their work.
When your team understands why a particular task is important, even menial jobs, and imbued with meaning. It’s only then that no task seems too small.
Feeling as if the work you are doing is a major determining factor on whether or not you want to stay with your company. As a leader, it’s important for you to fully understand this.
“Inspired employees are productive employees and who doesn’t want that? A company filled with inspired employees is a company whose chances of success are way higher, its people way happier, and its work far greater.” – COO Alliance
Celebrate Your Staff
Employees who receive regular recognition and praise for their work are far more likely to stay with your company. This is because celebrating your employees makes them feel appreciated and important which, in turn, increases employee retention. It’s more than worthwhile to take time to show your employees that you know they’ve been working hard and that you value that.
Sometimes, something as small as a “Great job!” message or email can go a long way. You never know when your employee is having a bad day and needs that validation to keep them going.
“Employees want to feel valued and appreciated for their contributions. And building a culture of feedback and employee recognition can go a long way to helping employees feel seen and heard-and less likely to seek that validation elsewhere.” – Quantum Workplace
Give Employees a Sense of Ownership and Responsibility
Good employees thrive most when they have a sense of autonomy. To increase employee retention, show each employee that you trust them by letting them call the shots once in a while.
Try regularly asking your employees for input. Don’t only ask for input, though. Genuinely listen to what they have to say. You should already be working with individuals you respect and trust anyway, so it shouldn’t be that hard to take their advice every now and then.
When you allow employees to take ownership of their work, they will feel as if they are a vital part of your organization. Employees who genuinely feel as if they are indispensable will almost always stick around.
Collaborate On a Strong, Long Term Vision for Their Employment
Once you have a strong vision for your company and its future, it is important to communicate all that to employees and make them aware of how they will fit into it.
It’s hard for an employee to trust in what they cannot see. That’s difficult for anyone. Including yourself. To instill confidence in your company and its future and make your employees want to stick around, you must map out their future. You want to make sure that you’re all on the same page about long-term plans for the company and for their time with it.
Do you have plans for your employees five years down the road? Ten? Fifteen? You should.
Having not only a day-to-day plan for your employees but also an overarching, multi-year one, will attach a lot more meaning to each employee’s work and motivate them to stick it out even during the hard times. That’s how you increase employee retention.
If you’re confident that you are doing everything that you can to support your employees in both their personal and professional growth, they will almost certainly want to stick around. Ensure that employees see their work as more than just a job, but an extension of their lives.
What do you do to increase employee retention? Let us know in the comments down below!
If you have questions or would like more information, I’d be happy to help. Please send us an email, and someone from my team will get in touch with you!
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in March 2019 and has been edited for accuracy and comprehensiveness.
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