Regardless of the industry or product, a company is only as good as its employees.
Unfortunately, a top-quality workforce is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain. Research from Gallup shows that approximately 51% of employees are either watching for or actively seeking employment elsewhere.
The good news is that much of this attrition is preventable—42% of employees who quit in 2023 say that their manager or organization could have done something to prevent them from leaving.
Today’s leaders need to ensure they’re engaging in open communication with employees to keep them. Here are 11 retention strategies you should implement to retain top talent.
Why is a Retention Strategy important?
Fundamentally, a retention strategy is any plan an organization designs and implements to help reduce turnover and improve engagement.
Although some turnover is an inevitable part of business, too much can easily eat into your company’s profits and ability to function. Recruiting, screening, interviewing, hiring, and onboarding new employees is an expensive endeavor, made even more costly by the time and energy your administration staff must invest.
The right employee retention strategy can lower your hiring costs while also freeing up management to pursue other essential projects.
For business leaders who want to reassess and reduce employee attrition, finding the right retention strategy means understanding their workforce’s needs and expectations, as well as addressing the challenges, uncertainties, and burnout that can quickly erode your employees’ commitment.
11 Ideas to Improve Employee Retention
Employee retention strategies take many forms, from the superficial—such as casual Fridays—to the comprehensive—such as completely restructuring the business.
Ultimately, these strategies all have one thing in common: They’re designed to optimize the employee experience.
Here are 11 ways to improve employee retention by better understanding and enhancing their journeys.
1. Hire for Culture as Well as Skill
During the hiring process, it’s important to search for candidates who have sufficient skills and experience. However, it’s also just as important to remember that skills can be taught.
It’s important to consider how prospective employees can contribute to your company culture. According to Harvard Business Review (HBR), it’s important to consider how well new team members’ values align with the organization’s.
To do this, you need to first understand what your culture is:
- Establish a set of values to define and clearly express what your company holds as important and what kind of behavior your employees will be expected to uphold.
- Reference those values throughout the hiring process.
- Ensure that hiring materials correctly convey cultural expectations.
Remember: Ensuring that your new hires align with your company culture is important not only to your business, it’s also a major consideration for most prospective employees.
Glassdoor reports that 77% of workers consider company culture when applying for a job, and 73% won’t apply to work with organizations whose values aren’t aligned with their own.
On the other hand, when new hires care about the same things your company cares about, they’re much more likely to want to stay.
2. Create a Seamless Onboarding Process
Unfortunately, after the intensity of the hiring process, many organizations tend to take a step back once they feel as though they’ve found the right person to fill the position.
Unfortunately, the ‘throw them in and see if they can swim’ approach can be extremely jarring to new employees who might not feel comfortable at their new workplace yet. This is where onboarding and orientation come into play.
A smooth onboarding process that guides employees through the process not only helps ensure that they hit the ground running in terms of productivity, but it also establishes a sense of trust in the organization.
Orientation programs are another essential aspect of onboarding, providing hires with insight into policies and expectations, and helping them understand exactly how they fit into the overall objectives and structure of the company.
With the right onboarding and orientation, your workforce will have a clear idea of what they should be doing, how best to do it, and what business goals they are supporting with their work. In essence, onboarding brings them into the team and helps them feel valued, capable, and included.
3. Prioritize Well-Being
Giving “110%” sounds like a good idea, but it’s not sustainable.
Exhausted employees don’t do anyone any good — not themselves, and not their employers.
Burnout leads to:
- Decreased productivity
- Lower efficiency
- Reduced engagement
- Increased turnover
Keeping employees healthy and happy is good business, but paid sick leave and competitive health insurance are only the beginning.
Take employee wellness further by offering:
- Additional stress reduction programs
- Free health assessments and screenings
- Fitness options
- Non-work-specific education
- Training opportunities
- Assistance and support programs
Additionally, give your employees time to recharge their mental batteries by presenting them with opportunities to step away from intense tasks and instead focus on personal projects.
Employee well-being is the antidote to burnout. Helping your employees focus on their well-being will help keep them engaged and loyal to the organization for years to come.
4. Be Competitive with Compensation
Desperate people looking for work will accept low salaries and benefits packages just to land a job.
But what happens once they’re finally taking home a regular paycheck? In most cases, these individuals will almost immediately start looking for something better, using their current employment as a financial buffer while they explore better options.
This leads to poor performance and increased attrition, where new hires treat their employer as nothing more than a layover preceding a better opportunity.
You can prevent this from happening by making your business the better opportunity that your hires have been waiting for.
Offer starting salaries that are consistent and competitive, and further flesh them out with clear chances for raises, bonuses, stock options, and other forms of compensation. Likewise, be sure that the benefits you bring to the table meet or exceed industry standards.
5. Reward Effort, Not Just Results
It makes sense why so many organizations emphasize results: They’re easy to track and directly influence success.
But not every great idea pays off right away. And when an employee goes above and beyond expectations, that’s worth celebrating regardless of whether it moves the needle on your quarterly profits.
It’s important to cultivate a psychologically safe work environment that encourages intelligent failure and learning from mistakes.
This teaches employees to go outside of their comfort zones and to try solutions even if there’s a chance that they won’t work. It encourages them to dedicate a portion of their time to improving aspects of the business that aren’t directly tied to KPIs, but that nonetheless help the organization grow in positive directions.
6. Build an Inclusive Culture
Diversity and inclusion are vital to organizational success.
If your organization—either intentionally or unintentionally—caters only to those who fit a particular, predetermined mold, you’ll be missing out on potentially excellent employees.
However, building an inclusive culture goes well beyond simply avoiding discrimination during the hiring process; it means creating a workplace in which everyone feels welcome and respected at all times.
Gallup lists three criteria for inclusivity in the workplace:
- Employees are treated with respect
- Everyone’s unique characteristics are appreciated
- Leadership acts ethically and morally
If your workplace doesn’t feel like a welcoming, accepting place, then you may be driving away potential top talent.
7. Invest in Growth Opportunities
The best leaders invest in their team members.
The people you hire have the capacity to become more than they are, bringing increased value to the organization as they expand upon their skills and abilities.
People like to improve, and if you make their growth a priority, itwill demonstrate that you’re as invested in their future as they are.
Clear development opportunities, training programs, and personal growth solutions show your team members that you value who they are and what they can become. It also gives your talent a way to remain engaged and further their careers without having to start looking for something new.
8. Consider Flexible Work Models
If an employee is hired for a fully remote role and it later told to “return to the office,” they’re likely going to feel frustrated. This is particularly true if they must relocate in order to do so.
The lockdown forced many traditionally in-person businesses to pivot to internet-based collaboration. As a result, many employees got an unexpected taste of what it would be like to not have to go into the office every morning.
But more than that, it meant they could do their jobs and plan their schedules in the way that best supported their success.
There has been an abundance of research in the past several years demonstrating that work-from-home arrangements can be just as productive as in-person—if not more so.
Establishing a work-from-home or hybrid model gives your employees the additional freedom many of them crave while also reinforcing their personal productivity best practices.
Plus, if they get other offers from other employers, the one that forces them to come into the office will have a hard time competing with the one that allows them to work from the comfort of their own homes. Research shows that approximately 67% of employers have lost top talent to companies that offer more flexible work arrangements.
9. Consistently Collect and Provide Feedback
If you want to know how your employees feel or where you could be improving engagement, ask them.
Providing multiple channels for employee feedback allows them to be heard. It also reinforces that you value their opinions and that your people are important drivers of company culture.
Bear in mind that some employees are hesitant to offer what might be thought of as criticism. This is why cultivating psychological safety is so important. Ensuring that employees can give their opinions and insights without fear of reprisal is the only way to ensure that feedback is honest.
As you solicit responses from your employees, make sure that you’re also regularly connecting with them to assess their work, what they bring to the table, and how they can further develop their skills.
10. Promote a Healthy Work-Life Balance
In most cases, people work to live—they don’t live to work.
Although a person’s career can be a priority, it’s not fair to expect them to make it their top priority when compared to other aspects of their life.
When employees feel as though their jobs are negatively affecting their ability to balance family, social, or other obligations, that’s often when they start updating their résumés.
You can help preserve a healthy and rewarding work-life balance by spreading the workload around so that no one person feels as though they can’t afford to get away. Flexible scheduling and less emphasis on time spent in the office further prove that you recognize that work is only one facet of your employees’ lives.
11. Dig Deep in Exit Interviews
Even with the best retention strategies, you’ll still lose valuable employees to other opportunities.
This is a natural part of doing business. It’s also a chance to improve. As you’re performing exit interviews with employees, solicit honest feedback about their experience with your company.
Even if there’s nothing you can do to keep this particular employee on your team, you can still apply their insights—including identifying any specific circumstances that might have driven them away—to improve the experience of those who come after.
Many employees will be even more honest during exit interviews than they are with anonymous surveys, so this can be a rare opportunity to dig deep and allow them to say the things that they never felt they could while on your payroll.
How Teamraderie Can Help Deepen Your Company Culture
The experiences your employees have with your organization will determine how and when they decide to move on.
The good news is that you can take steps to excite, encourage, and evolve your top talent so that they’re more likely to put down the kind of roots that lead to a long and prosperous work relationship. Make employee experience your focus, and employee retention will naturally follow.
Teamraderie has the talent and experience to help you bring your people together in commitment and trust. From fun activities to team learning, Teamraderie boosts the employee experience, helping you retain the people who drive your business.
