A massive surge in the entrepreneurial drive has changed how companies do business. While demand remains the same, competition has become fiercer, creating more winners than losers every quarter. Take Uber or Byju’s, for example. The once rapidly growing tech juggernauts are now growing sluggishly.
This trend turns out to be more common than expected, which is a significant reason for employee retention. Let’s try and understand the problem in more detail and see how you, as an employer, can change things. Let’s start with the basics.
What is Employee Retention?
A wise man once said,
“Start the retention process when the person is still open to staying and not after they have already told you they are leaving.”
Clearly, this is high time that companies start to introspect & remodel their strategies to retain & nurture employees. Employee retention guide is nothing but to keep your employees committed & loyal to your company by mutually agreeing upon common goals & purposes.
Indeed, The process of staff retention is as important as the process of recruitment. Without a doubt, the retained employee will work alongside the management & justify all the hiring, training & development expenses spent on him. Therefore, organizations with a heavy focus on long-term growth should proactively form & implement a water-tight employee retention strategy to attract & nurture talent.
Market Scenario Around Employee Retention
Statistics around employee retention around the world are not that great. According to Work Institute, companies can retain almost 3/4th of employees by putting in some effort. 2020 showed employee turnover percentage as high as 57%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statics ( USA).
The reputed employee survey from Gallup indicated that employees who are positively engaged in their new jobs would have 59% less likelihood of searching for a new jump during their first year. The famous magazine in economics stated that during a survey, 92% of employees agreed to stay longer with the company if their management & line managers demonstrated higher empathetic behavior.
Why Are You Unable to Retain Employees?
Organizations that have mastered the art of employee retention strategy know that the preventive work starts internally. All organizations need to do is have a clear focus & implement appropriate strategies.
These are some of the key reasons your company may face retention issues.
- Bureaucratic environment
- Little or no freedom to give suggestions
- Unclear organizational objectives
- Poor synchronization between company & employee work goals
- Disengaged Management
- Inadequate focus on training & development of employees
- Lower pay scale compared to the market
How to Improve Employee Retention?
• Recalibrate Payscales
One of the biggest reasons adversely affecting the employee retention statistic for companies is their lack of will to pay the workforce at par with the market. Ideally, management must restructure their payscales continuously. Reward the employees for the financial success of the organization. Such measures make them feel included & recognized for their contribution.
• Facilitate Development
We don’t recommend mandatory training conducted during onboarding. Employees should be encouraged & facilitated to take un new courses & certifications. Management must invest in professional growth. Sponsored diplomas & in-house training can do wonders to boost employee motivation & loyalty.
• Add Non-Monetary Benefits
There are ample opportunities for an organization to improve employee retention programs. Simple gestures like opening a creche in the premise will automatically increase the likelihood of longer serving female employees. Implement flexible working hours & form policies to make work from home possible. Add various leaves such as paternity leave, and leave on account of the demise of a family member. These are just some of the suggestions. Companies can assess their workforce & bring creative benefits to their people.
• Re-evaluate & Re-align Company Objectives
We will explain this remedy using an example. For example, an organization is in the business of business process outsourcing. Very ambitiously, they announce that they value their customers above all & implement a 24*7 support function. Here, the company’s intent is good, but they fail to re-organize their workforce resources & their working situations. Everyone is encouraged to participate in their journey of excellence by stretching themselves.
Ultimately people feel exhausted & exploited for the selfish purpose of the company & start looking out for another place to work. Hence, it is wise first to take into account the comfort & concerns of your people before creating a mutual goal for your company.
• Encourage Creativity
One of the biggest mistakes companies make is to underestimate their people. Management should always be open to creative ideas & reward the brains behind them. Such recognition will keep the employees motivated to work towards the betterment of the organization. Create a platform that helps the employees reach out to the organization’s decision-makers with their ideas for evaluation & implementation. Freedom to express creative ideas is an excellent way to improve staff retention.
• Provide Platform to Employees for Raising Their Voice
Companies should have policies such as conducting skip-level meetings, which helps the lower or middle management engage with the higher-level employees. Such set-up gives a certain kind of confidence to employees & trust in the openness of the company towards employee engagement concerns. Such an initiative would be a great tool to improve employee retention.
• Offer Internal Opportunities & Encourage Cross-Functional Movements
One significant consideration is that employees should not feel stuck with their jobs. Management should consider human aspects such as job stagnancy & lack of challenge. Human Resources should carefully formulate policies that encourage employees to move internally & explore other domains within and ensure effective implementation.
• Set Clear Accountability for Supervisors
Definitely, we all have heard an infamous quote saying, “People don’t leave the organization; they leave their bosses.” Well, this summarises it all. Manage your supervisors effectively & encourage them to have an empathetic approach towards their subordinates. Discourage usage of foul language & aggressive behavior that may offend the workforce deeply. An organization’s respectful culture can be a great tool to retain its employees for a long time.
• Formulate Transparent Policies & Practises
Every policy in the organization should be made available to each employee. While curating the employee retention program, the decision-makers should always consider the employee’s viewpoint. Companies with utmost integrity & transparency should carry out critical practices like granting leaves & appraisals. Such an approach will help you to gain the trust of your people.
• Customize Your Strategies
Every suggestion made above may not be of use to your organization. But they will give you a sense of direction while creating a workplace where employee retention problem is not an issue. After analyzing your organization’s workforce you can accordingly curate an employee retention strategy. Every aspect should be considered, such as age, race, geographical environment, gender ratio & things like that. Such in-depth evaluation will help craft your place’s most fitting employee retention program keeping every employee equally under consideration.
Conclusion: Win the Workplace Before Winning The Marketplace
Amid the rush to succeed, organizations need to remember one thing. Besides a great product, they need a loyal workforce on their side to grow & sustain themselves. Hence, they should not just focus on remedial but preventive measures to keep their employee retention stats under control. I hope the strategies explained above will come in handy to all those who value their employees & wish to take them along in their journey towards long-lasting success.
