How to Hold onto Your Best Talent

What is a business without its employees? No matter whether you run a small coffee shop, a financial services business, or a legal firm, you need to prioritise holding onto your best talent. If you lose one of your best employees to the competition, you are going to severely weaken your position while enhancing your competitor’s, not to mention the costs you will incur through the hiring process. So, with that being said, read on to discover the many different ways that you can boost your employee retention rates.

Give them opportunities to advance their skills

One of the main reasons why employees end up moving on is because they feel like they do not have any opportunities for progression in their current role. Basically, they are in a dead-end job! Offering your employees training opportunities can make a huge difference. There are lots of online courses such as those offered by JCU Online, meaning employees can advance their skills without there being a significant disruption to your business. Not only will this help to keep your employees happy, but your business will benefit from a more skilled workforce too, which means improved quality and productivity.

Be more flexible

A lot of employees have expressed that they would prefer to have flexible working conditions. After all, with life being so demanding, sticking to stringent working hours can be very difficult for a lot of staff members. If your employee has children, for example, why not allow them to work around this? Would it matter if your employee started work an hour or two earlier so they could leave earlier to pick up their child from school? If not, then why not allow it? It will make a huge difference to your employee, and something like this is a perk that they will not want to let go of easily.

Your members of staff must feel appreciated, recognised and rewarded

Simple recognition can go a long way. Just saying ‘thank you’ can make a difference to the way your employees feel when they are at work. You can also give gifts, bonuses, and monetary awards too. Retaining staff through justified raises, which are tied to achievement and accomplishments, is an effective approach. After all, when people feel like their hard work is recognised and appreciated, they are going to be more likely to continue to work hard. Why would they want to go anywhere else?

Embrace staff parties and team bonding activities

Another way to boost your employee retention levels is to recognise their hard work with parties and team bonding activities. Of course, this does not mean that you need to hold a party every week! But, it’s not hard to see how excited people get when the Christmas party gets closer. By hosting such events and putting a lot of effort into them, your workforce will feel appreciated and this is bound to have a positive impact on staff retention.

Speak to your workforce about what matters to them

Do you already offer employee benefits? Great, but are they really that beneficial? When providing employee benefits, you need to make sure you choose them with care. If you have a lot of parents at your business, something family related may be more suitable, for example, life or health insurance, or childcare vouchers. If you have a lot of young people working for your company, maybe a gym membership would be better suited to them. The whole point of having employee benefits in place is to make your job vacancies and positions more tempting for staff. While a free gym membership may appeal to some workers, it won’t appeal to everyone, so you do need to think carefully about the benefits you offer. The best thing to do is simply talk to your staff. Explain that while you cannot please everyone, you want to make sure employee benefits are serving their purpose, i.e. being beneficial! Ask them to provide you with a list of the employee benefits that would best suit them in order of importance. This can then help you to determine what sort of benefits are going to be best for holding onto your corporate talent.

Never threaten an employee’s income or job, no matter the circumstances

Once you do this, you will struggle to win that employee back. From the moment their job or income is threatened, they feel a lack of security, and this will result in them looking elsewhere for a new job. Even if you know that layoffs are definitely going to happen if sales goals or production goals are not met, this is not information that you should pass onto your employees. No matter how you phrase it, it is going to make them nervous. Plus, if that person isn’t going to be laid off, they could end up securing a job elsewhere anyway simply because you have made them anxious about the future.

Make sure your employees have the resources they need

It is also important to make sure that your employees have the resources they need to do the job effectively. A lot of business owners tend to assume that any failures in the work environment are down to their workforce not operating efficiently. However, you need to assess the work systems too. Is there anything about this that is causing the person to fail? It’s not all about talent; your employees need the right tools and training too.

Equal treatment and fairness are imperative when retaining your best talent

You may have one member of staff that outperforms everyone else. Because of this, you may want to give him all of the best clients and the best opportunities. But, when you do this, you alienate the rest of your workforce. It appears as if they are not getting equal treatment and that you do not operate a fair working environment. This will lead to a lot of disgruntled employees. Remember, information does not stay a secret in businesses, and so even if you try to keep your actions quiet, other employees are bound to find out and this will severally impact morale within the workforce. Make sure that everyone gets fair treatment and that your employees feel like they all have equal opportunities.

Create an environment whereby your employees feel like they can talk freely

This is another important step when attempting to boost employee retention levels. You need to create an environment whereby people feel comfortable sharing their ideas and giving feedback. Not only does this make your workforce feel more comfortable, but it helps your business too because it leads to continual improvement. Not only this, but if your employees feel like they are constantly having to bite their tongue, they will feel undervalued in the workplace, which is never a good thing.

Think about the quality of the supervision that is provided

In most cases, employees leave supervisors and managers, as opposed to leaving jobs or companies. It’s not that the supervisor isn’t a nice person; it is that they make an employee feel undervalued or that they do not give the employee what they need to do their job effectively. Some of the common complaints regarding supervision are as follows: not providing a framework within the employee perceives he or she can succeed, failing to hold scheduled meetings, a lack of feedback about performance, a lack of clarity regarding earning potential, and a lack of clarity about expectations.

Provide unique perks

You need to look for ways to provide unique perks that are not offered by other businesses. This could be anything from nap pods to free meals – something that Silicon Valley has become notorious for. Be creative with your perks and you will reap the benefits. Use your connections to get special discounts at certain retailers or free tickets to events, for example.

Create the right culture

Last but not least, creating the right company culture is imperative in terms of retention rates. Locate workers that have a strong connection with your business so that you can generate a workplace that attracts those employees. Your business culture needs to match the kind of individual you want to employ, whether you have a laid-back and casual atmosphere or more of a strict and by-the-book workplace.

So there you have it: some of the best ways to hold onto your top talent and keep your employee retention rates high. From providing training opportunities to giving your employees the gratitude they deserve, there are lots of ways you can build the perfect environment for your workforce so that they will never want to leave.