Employee Retention: How To Know When To Take Action

It's hard to find the right employee, but retaining great talent is even harder. It is a whole new challenge, if not a complex strategy. One of the first signs that an employee is about to leave the company or will soon do so is a loss of engagement. Making employees as engaged at work as possible can be done with the help of well-thought-out retention strategies, which is what we will be talking about today.

Employee retention is a set of measures aimed at keeping employees interested and engaged in the work process. It's simple: the more comfortable people work in your company, the less they want to leave. Employee retention should be part of the corporate culture - that is, retention methods should always be applied, not only when staff turnover has already reached critical levels.

Reasons for Employee Turnover

Before understanding how to retain employees, you need to understand why they leave. The main reasons are three:

• dissatisfaction with salary;
• inability to move up the career ladder, to show initiative;
• a toxic environment and a poor relationship with the employer.

Only by understanding people's problems and needs can you reduce turnover and retain valuable employees for the long term.

Which Employees Should Be Retained?

It is believed that employees in any organization are divided into the following proportions:

• 20% - key employees, the best staff. They drive your business forward. They are hunted by competitors. They are hard to replace. The most efficient, productive, and creative staff. You should try to retain these employees in the first place - their departure directly affects the company's profits.
• 70% - the golden mean, performers. The backbone of production. It is quite possible to replace these employees, but still, it is more profitable to train them, improve their qualifications, and keep them in the company than to recruit new employees of the same type. Understanding the benefits of AI in recruiting can help determine the best strategies for retaining and further developing these valuable employees. Additionally, it has the potential to streamline the talent acquisition process and improve productivity.
• 10% - "ballast", the most unmotivated, weak employees. These employees should be replaced, not waiting until they decide to leave on their own.

How to Retain Key Employees in the Company

If a truly valuable employee comes to you with the news that he or she has received a lucrative offer - oddly enough, this is not yet bad news. It means there's an opportunity to negotiate and keep the employee from being fired. If everything was already finalized, he or she would have put the documents on the table without any further discussion.

It is important to understand the person's motives: is it a matter of a higher salary? Was there a better offer? Did he or she work with a difficult manager and was tired of the stress? Talk to the employee and try to find out the real reasons for the dismissal. Find out what competitors have come up with and make a counteroffer.

Perhaps the problem is for example, because of a move. In that case, you can discuss telecommuting or a flexible schedule. Maybe the person has been working too hard and is simply burned out - try offering a long vacation, during which you can reboot and think things over again.

Sometimes during the negotiation process, it becomes clear that it's better to let the employee go. If a person has already lost loyalty (in other words - hopelessly tired of your company or has already morally joined another), then any methods of retaining employees will work for a short time. Most likely, a little time will pass and she or he will quit anyway.

Ways to Keep Employees From Quitting

Gather Feedback

Many layoffs can be predicted and prevented by monitoring employee sentiment. Always be careful that employee departures don't come as a surprise that hits the company's pocketbook and disrupt work processes.

Employees can fill out surveys every month or year, where they share their feelings about their job, their wishes, and their evaluations. They can sign it or remain anonymous. In this way, the HR department will identify weaknesses in the company's work in order to direct its attention there and solve the problem.

Provide Hybrid Workplaces

With the new post-pandemic world, flexible work schedules have become a very natural expectation of candidates rather than a perk that companies used to offer. 

Creating hybrid workplaces is a great compromise that employers can offer employees. In such a case, two parties will be left with a win-win situation. 

Employees will save commute time and money on travel and lunch. They will have a better work-life balance, with fewer distractions. Also, working from home is safer in the current environment in terms of health. Employers, on the other hand, can reduce infrastructure costs, and overheads, avoid office politics, and reduce absenteeism. 

The best part is that there are no geographical restrictions in hiring and companies get access to more talent. To bring together a remote team and establish seamless communication, you should implement a reliable team communication and collaboration solution that provide real-time feedback and info sharing across different channels to optimize workflow and increase productivity.

Offer Decent Rewards

Dissatisfaction with pay is still the number one reason for quitting. Valuable employees rightly do not want to stay where they are not valued. Knowledgeable employees who have been paid the same salary for several years or are stuck in the same place are likely to be dissatisfied with this arrangement and look elsewhere. To address concerns about pay transparency and fairness, companies can proactively generate a pay stub to provide clear documentation of employees' compensation, fostering trust and satisfaction in the workplace.

Don't forget about monetary incentives: bonuses and bonuses for a job well done motivate better performance and increase employee loyalty. To help you with all of the above, even if you’re a small business, implementing payroll software for small business demands can be extremely beneficial for automating the process that seems like a hassle.

Take Care of Your Employees’ Well-Being and Health

To retain employees, show them care and attention by providing more than just sick leave and free health screenings. For example, LinkedIn gave its employees a week's vacation to help with burnout. For a week, employees are required to turn off all messengers, and emails, and not go online. The week without social media, messengers, or detox, in general, is meant to help prevent burnout so that while on vacation, employees are not distracted by emails, meeting reminders, questions about projects, etc.

Also, if employees go to the office, make sure you have pandemic safety measures in place. You can put together a comprehensive healthcare plan that takes care of your employees' well-being, and make sure everyone is covered by health insurance. 

Train Your Employees

Valuable staff always want to grow and develop, and forward-thinking employers should encourage this. A skilled professional will bring a lot of value to the company and will also want to move up the career ladder, which in itself is highly motivating. Remember: if a valuable employee has nowhere to develop in your company, they will develop in another.

The more skills an employee has, the more authority he/she has, and the more complex tasks he/she can solve.

Support Diversity and Inclusion

Millennials and Generation Z, who share a tolerant attitude towards all people regardless of their sexual orientation, gender, race, etc., are now actively occupying the ranks of corporate employees. Organizations that practice DEI initiatives and respect people of all backgrounds and orientations will attract and retain more talent."

When people are not afraid of being teased or bullied at work, they do their jobs better. As stress is reduced and new ideas emerge, the team becomes more effective at getting the job done. Respect shifts the focus from personal goals and accomplishments to company goals and success. With respect, the team is focused on the welfare of the company rather than on petty disagreements.

To Sum Up, competition in the marketplace for talent has multiplied, making it challenging to attract and retain talent. Choose retention strategies for your company and employees that fit and reinforce your values, thereby retaining talent. Don't forget about feedback, praise, and rewards and then you will have happy employees who will be hard to poach. If this happens, and the employee wants to go elsewhere, retention methods do not bring the desired effect.

Bonus Read : How to start YouTube automation business  

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