Are you worried about your staff turnover? If you are, don’t fret, you’re not alone. In fact, according to Deloitte, employee engagement and retention is the top concern for 78% of business leaders.
It’s not difficult to see why. It can cost between 6 to 9 months worth of an employee's salary to replace them and, when annual staff turnover rates in industries like hospitality and retail regularly exceed 100%, the cost of replacing staff soon adds up.
Not only does the financial burden of having to constantly replace and retrain staff sit heavily on a business, the knock-on effects are also keenly felt. Customer satisfaction and the experience they receive can all suffer, as can staff morale and the culture you’re trying to create.
So what can be done about it? Thankfully, there are some easy wins and simple changes you can make to boost your employee retention. Here’s where to start.
1. Hire the right people
Ensuring you have good levels of retention starts from the hiring process. According to the Harvard Business Review, 80% of employee turnover comes from bad hiring decisions. Look beyond the resume and establish whether candidates will enhance the culture you’re trying to create in the workplace.
2. Create a strong onboarding process
Simply hiring the right people isn’t enough. Good onboarding is crucial in making sure your staff get to the position they need to be. Use this opportunity to make new starters feel part of the team and help them know, not just what’s expected of them, but the rewards on offer if they succeed. This development doesn’t finish with the onboarding process. With Middlesex University’s Institute for Work-based Learning finding that 74% of workers felt they weren’t reaching their full potential and wished they’d received more training, it’s vital you continue to invest in the development of your staff.
3. Have a great culture
Culture, and keeping a great culture, is everything in fast moving companies. A successful company will create a culture where there's room for ideas and, more importantly, where ideas are acted upon. They’ll always include their employees and make sure they feel they can speak freely. And make your employees feel involved in creating your culture. Employees form the groundswell of support which will define how successful a corporate culture is. This means they have to be involved in creating it as well as owning it. To do this, listen to their wants and give them a voice. Whether it’s monthly company-wide meetings with the CEO or other clear channels of communication, it’s vital to listen to your employees. Do this and they will immediately feel more valued and, as a result, more loyal.
4. Offer flexible schedules and working hours
Giving your employees choice and control over when they work, especially when it comes to shifting work, is one of the single biggest things you can do to improve your retention and improve their happiness. The simple act of being able to manage when they work, managing their leave, and seeing the hours they’ve worked (especially when it can all be done through an app) is empowering for staff who have, historically, felt like they haven’t been heard. In a recent study, 95% of part-time workers strongly agreed that using an app makes it easy for them to adjust their schedules in order to fit their needs.
5. Offer the right pay
In a competitive marketplace, it’s essential to offer attractive compensation packages. Obviously, this includes the salary but also bonuses, paid time off, health benefits, pensions, and all the other perks that can distinguish one workplace from another. Every employee should have a full understanding of all the benefits they receive from your organization.
6. Celebrate together
Make employees feel engaged by celebrating successes with them. This could be anything from a celebration when a target is hit or a milestone is reached. It could be an employee profit-sharing scheme where the success of the business has a direct impact on the employee in a financial sense. Celebrating together and letting the good times roll will only ever be good for engagement.
7. Use technology
From streamlining the way you communicate to empowering your employees, there are many different ways technology can be used to keep staff loyal. You can make your life easier (as well as making it much easier to manage your staff) by investing in simple tools and software that give more to your staff while saving you time and money.
IIf you’d like to discover more ways to optimize your business and empower your employees, then we’d recommend downloading our Trend guide for Workforce Management which you can access through the link below.
