Organizations today are finding it more challenging to keep employees, especially top-performing talent. They are easily targeted and ensnared by recruitment head hunters, most notably on LinkedIn. Unlike in previous decades when employees stayed in one job for the rest of their productive years until retirement age.
While it’s normal for employees to look for greener pastures, it’s a problem for companies to look for replacements. Looking for the right candidate is difficult enough. Motivating employees to stay offers a whole new set of challenges. It has its adverse effects on other employees, too.
To solve your talent retention problems, you need to evaluate what your company offers to your employees and put some strategies to make them stay.
Here are three areas that you need to improve to increase employee retention in your company.
Onboarding and Orientation
While potential employees are eager to impress their prospective employers, so should you. It’s the first and best thing you can do to make them decide that your company is the right one for them. You can do this by improving your onboarding process. In fact, employee retention begins with the right recruitment process, which includes onboarding.
Your onboarding process should provide complete details on how new hires should do their job fast and well. It should stir their curiosity about what’s in store for them. It would be best if you motivated them to immerse and get themselves involved as quickly as possible.
At the same time, your onboarding process should let new employees get a glimpse of your organization’s company culture. It’s not just about the salary and company policies. It would help if you taught them about company activities, incentives, and who they’ll work with. It’s important to let them know what benefits they can get from working in your company.
Employee Engagement
A first sign of employees wanting to leave is disengagement. They will distant themselves, avoiding group and socialization activities. These employees are harmful to your company. They set poor examples, especially for new employees. They fail to do their work correctly and influence others to do the same. Worse, they bring everybody’s morale down.
Some reasons that bring down engagement is the lack of voice and feedback. According to the HR Exchange Network, a way to solve engagement problems in the workplace is through recognition, professional cohesion, and social bonds.
The best way to offer recognition is to give employees a voice. Allow them to contribute their ideas and thoughts. Let them know that company decisions can be influenced by what they have to say. In the same way, provide feedback about their work. Let them know if they’ve done an excellent job or if they need to work better with their tasks.
To foster professional cohesion and social bonds, develop mentorship programs that can help them connect with their seniors and leaders. At the same time, encourage managers and supervisors to build professional relationships with their department or team members. Team collaboration across departments is also an excellent way to promote professional inclusion.
For social connection, encourage team building activities, after-work get together, and birthday celebrations. If a milestone has been met in the company, start a small party in the office or anything that will allow your employees to gather and socialize.
Employee Wellness
High-demand and labor-intensive projects are good news for companies. They mean profits. However, they can burn out employees. While you can’t prevent demanding projects, you can help employees avoid getting burned out. Provide wellness programs that can help employees recuperate or get refreshed.
One way of providing wellness programs is to put up a separate area in your workplace where employees can play, rest, watch TV, have fun, and simply relax. A room with a TV and lounge area can do much. A small gym or a room with arcade games can also help. Or, you can put up a large pantry with a relaxation area where employees can take naps after lunch.
You can also offer wellness programs. They can include fitness programs, classes for specific hobbies, programs for relaxation, and more.
Another solution is to treat your employees to an IV therapy clinic or spa visit to get themselves rejuvenated. You can offer this as an after-work or weekend activity. You can also provide this as an incentive for a job well done.
And after offering all of this, you can expect your employees to work better. If they still get burned out, it’s time for your HR and management team to reach out. There may be something more serious that’s causing an employee to feel all burned out.
The Final Decision Rests in Your Employees’ Hands
Employers often forget that employees are not robots—their work matters to them. However, if problems with the areas mentioned in this article arise, they will leave. On the brighter side, it’s not all your fault. The final decision still rests in their hands.
What you can do is improve in those key areas to increase retention for your next employees. By the time you hire new talent, it’ll be harder for them to leave.
