It can be a huge inconvenience when any employee leaves your business, especially if you’re a small business, but when one of your best employees leaves, it can leave you wondering how you’re going to replace them.
Sometimes, your employees pack up and leave because of their boss, colleagues, their work environment, workload, or a general lack of appreciation. In this article, we discuss ways to help you retain your best employees.
One of the main reasons that good employees quit is a lack of flexibility to fit work around their lives. This could be a case of childcare, appointments, or even wanting to work to a schedule where they would be more productive.
Similarly, working from home during lockdown may have made many employees realise that there is an alternative way of working and, if their employer doesn’t allow them to continue working from home post-COVID, they may begin to look elsewhere.
To retain your employees, consider introducing a flexi-time system, the option to work from home for a set number of days per week, or even trusting your employees to choose their own work schedule within reason. These choices will make your employees feel valued, and could reduce burnout in the long-run.
It may seem obvious, but appropriately rewarding your employees may encourage them to stay. It shows appreciation, provides an opportunity for appraisal, and can imply that there is a future for them with the company.
Examples of rewards could be promotion, salary increase, benefits, and training or an opportunity to develop.
Allowing your employees to develop and progress is a great retention strategy. Not only does it challenge them, but also makes them feel appreciated and that they’re good at their job. It could also make them feel that they have something to work towards and that there is both potential and longevity with the company.
Development could be training, courses, rising into management or mentoring, or being given the opportunity to work on new projects where they can gain new skills.
Good relationships at work, both with colleagues and managers, help to create a good work environment, trust, and may reduce the chance of good employees leaving due to a bad or even toxic environment.
Similarly, respect for your employees goes a long way. Good, hard working employees that feel disrespected by colleagues and management may decide to pack up and leave. To retain your good employees, respect for them, their work, and their home life is imperative.
A good retention strategy is recommended for any business that wants to keep their best employees, or lower their turnover rate. Some things to consider when creating an effective employee retention strategy include:
Good employees quit for a variety of reasons, but it almost always involves negative action (or inaction) from their employer or colleagues. Common reasons include:
The Society for Human Resource Management predicts that each time a business needs to replace an employee that is salaried, it costs them 6-9 months salary on average. They estimate that to replace a manager earning over £40,000 per year, it would cost £20,000-£30,000 in recruiting and training costs.
At Centric HR, we believe that strategic attraction methods and an effective retention plan are key to retaining your best employees. We can help you to identify opportunities, as well as determining why your best employees leave.
Get in touch with us today to learn more about our HR attraction and retention service, and HR consulting services.
