Employee Retention Rates
For nearly all businesses, the Covid pandemic has been a stress test like no other. The challenges which have faced employers have potentially been the greatest in the past century.
Many businesses have had to make unexpected decisions, with a large majority of employees navigating a work environment with no office and health and safety being pushed to the very top of the agenda.
As such it may be more important now than it has ever been for businesses and their management to be looking at ways in which they can ensure the best employees are retained.
Employees who dislike their job, feel unfulfilled in their job, or see no progression path will not stick around long-term. Preventing these issues from arising will mean low staff turnover, which in turn means less time and money will be needed to spend on recruitment. Alongside this your employer brand will be strengthened.
So…the big question is “How can I improve may employee retention rates and set my business apart from various competitors?”
An important consideration for this is understanding why employees may leave a job in the first place. Using our experience as a recruitment agency we have compiled a number of tips which can help improve employee retention.
Make your Onboarding Process a Priority
Many employers believe that onboarding only occurs for the first few weeks, however, studies have shown 50% of all hourly workers leave new jobs within the first 120 days. A staggering number, however, the silver lining to this is that effective onboarding processes improve retention rates by over 50%.
A well thought out onboarding program can greatly help your business in many recruitment aspects, with SHRM Foundation conducting research and finding new employees who attended a structured orientation program were 69% more likely to remain at a company for up to 3 years.
Remember, the onboarding process is your newly recruited employee’s introduction to your company. As the old saying goes “You never get a second chance to make a good first impression”, and if your new hires have a poor first impression they may not understand the company culture, mission, or values.
One key indicator of whether your onboarding process needs improving is your employee retention rates in the first 6 months, if you are losing large numbers of new hires your onboarding may be a problem.
You will then be faced with the question…would you rather spend less money now on onboarding or spend more later on re-recruiting employees?
Frequent and Transparent Communication
Communication is vital in any business environment, and it should come as no surprise that employees favour an open and honest work environment.
We have all been in the situation where we have been given a task or leave a meeting with no idea of what to do or how to tackle said task. This ambiguity alone can cause issues if it occurs regularly.
Combine this sort of instance with a lack of understanding and no avenues of discourse to management and it becomes easy to understand how a poor company culture can develop. Many professionals who are exposed to this type of scenario will struggle to envision a long-term future remaining in this environment.
Clear and constant communication ought to be a cornerstone value of any workplace, this is doubly the case if you want to build trust with your staff and ensure company culture remains positive.
Management plays an important part of this and they should be trained and provided adequate resources to deal any issue effectively.
Putting these measures in place will not only help your employees feel supported in their role but can greatly improve work efficiency and retention rates.
Employees who feel their managers are available and listen to them will feel happier in their jobs, thus becoming far less likely to search for other employment opportunities.
Support a Healthy Work-Life Balance
Any work environment which promotes a poor work-life balance is liable to promote higher stress levels and burnout. Higher stress levels associated with the workplace will inevitably lead employees to having a jaded view of their job.
All good employers should consider their staff’s wellbeing and encourage a healthy balance across their business.
There are numerous different ways of doing this, with a few examples being to encourage employees to have full lunch breaks, bringing healthy food options into the workplace and operating an open-door policy with management on any suggestions which employees feel may improve the current work environment.
Tied into the above tip, having management be more open and amicable with employees with regards to work-life balance and stress can greatly improve a company’s culture.
Mind found that 19% of employees felt they couldn’t tell their boss if they were overly stressed. Prolonged periods of stress can cause numerous issues including lower efficiency and higher employee turnover rates.
Allowing employees to offer suggestions and following through on some will show a willingness to work alongside a workforce and that you are valuing their wellbeing instead of solely their work performance. Creating this relationship will promote greater brand loyalty.
Offer Beneficial Packages
A study conducted by CV-Library showed that one third (33.3%) of employees disliked their current job due to feeling they aren’t compensated adequately for the effort they put in. Every employer with retention problems ought to be analysing their own approach to combating this problem – it is vital that you are rewarding employees for working well with the competitive packages.
One of the first things to look at is that you are keeping up with the average pay in your industry, if your employee can easily look online and see they are being underpaid they are highly likely to look elsewhere for employment.
Do keep in mind, however, that even if you are unable to offer the most competitive salary, it is possible to compensate for this with other benefits and perks.
One such perk could be offering an early finish on a Friday for example, this was found to be on the top of the wish list for employee perks by a 2017 survey conducted by Payment Sense. Other popular perks listed include free healthy eating options, gym memberships and flexible working hours.
Hire Employees who fit your Workplace Culture
When you come across a potential hire who has an amazing education, significant experience in their field and knows the industry inside and out, you may be tempted to hire them on the spot. Before doing this, it is highly recommended that you look at whether they match your cultural fit.
Over 80% of companies say that measuring cultural fit is especially important and that it is an important factor when evaluating candidates.
If you are not looking towards how a potential employee may fit, or not fit, into your current workplace then you could very well be on the way to making a poor hiring decision.
One way to address potential fit is to talk to candidates about your particular culture, is to talk and gauge potential candidates about your culture, the way you work, the company’s morals and how it is structured.
If a new hire isn’t interested in the type of business, you run then it will show in their performance and may also indicate a reluctance to work towards the company goals.
Improving Staff Retention Rates
Overall, there are numerous ways in which you can tackle and prevent a high staff turnover rate.
Begin by looking towards your own culture and how management can help in employing methods such as those listed above. It may be necessary to create new training programs and restructuring your business.
Whilst in the short-term more work may be required, this effort will be repaid many times over in the long run through improved employee satisfaction, efficiency, and retention rates.
Employees will make or break a business. Accordingly make sure you treat them well, otherwise they will look for different employers who have employed approaches such as the tips mentioned above.