How to retain employees: top tips for keeping employees engaged
Happy, productive employees make for a more profitable business and more enjoyable workplace. Here’s how to retain and engage your employees.
While it’s true that the customer is always right, there is another group of people who are just as important to your business – your employees.
Experts estimate replacing a valuable staff member can cost a business two to three times the outgoing employee’s salary thanks to costs associated with recruiting, onboarding, reduced productivity and engagement.
And the issue of staff retention has never been more relevant than right now.
Thanks to the pandemic, employees are increasingly rethinking their priorities – and their jobs. Resignation rates are so high – 4 million US workers quit in July 2021, while a quarter of UK employees are planning to leave their jobs – that a new term has been coined: the Great Resignation.
But it’s not just about retaining employees; keeping team members happy, engaged and motivated is the key to ensuring they remain productive, and that your business remains successful.
Recent global research found that just 20 per cent of workers globally are engaged, and estimated low engagement costs the global economy a staggering US$8.1 trillion.
In service industries including retail, where customer experience is key, happy and engaged employees are particularly critical.
So, how can you keep your employees engaged and retained? Here are our top tips.
Create a clear onboarding process
Ever heard the phrase, ‘start as you wish to continue’? It applies to business, as well as to employee retention.
To ensure workers feel connected and, in turn, motivated to perform for your organization, it’s important to create a comprehensive onboarding process.
“Companies need to set up each new employee for success and ensure their newest team members have what they need in terms of knowledge, equipment, and employee networks,” says Leigh Davies, team leader of global recruitment firm Drake International.
Ensure newest team members have what they need in terms of knowledge, equipment, and employee networks.
That means ensuring employees have a clear understanding of the role and their responsibility – and perhaps creating an onboarding pack with all the information, contacts and log ins they need.
“This will help new members thrive in their new role and reduce the risk of fall off”, Davies explains.
The onboarding process also helps set realistic expectations about the role, says Wendy Jenkins, an HR manager-turned-certified resilience coach and founder of Ready Resilience.
“[Employees] have had the marketing pitch in the interview, so we want to give them as much certainty as possible about what they’re there for, who they can reach out to, what benefits there are to them joining and what’s expected of them.
“Where there’s potential for them to feel stress or workload overwhelm, set them up with the tools to manage those stressors. It’s important they come away from onboarding feeling motivated, enthusiastic and confident in what they’re going to do; knowing they have everything they need to feel resourceful, autonomous, and ultimately thrive, ” Davies says.
Keep managerial communication lines open
There is an oft-repeated phrase that ‘employees don’t leave companies, they leave managers’, and a key part of the employee-manager relationship is keeping communication lines open.
Employees who feel their voice is heard are 4.6 times more likely to feel empowered to do their best work. In addition, according to the Harvard Business Review, employees who get limited one-on-one time with their manager are more likely to be disengaged.
Employees want to feel supported and listened to.
“What consistently comes up during my sessions is that employees want to feel supported and listened to,” says Jenkins. “They want to know their manager has their back. Again – it’s about minimizing their uncertainty – the better you communicate, the more certainty they will feel heard. Sometimes people need to hear something more than you think, especially if they are in a stressful situation.”
Foster connection between co-workers
Creating open communication lines extends to co-workers, too, says Jenkins.
“The majority of us are hardwired to want to connect with others. Providing opportunities for employees to engage with their colleagues outside of work processes is really important,“ she explains.
Davies adds that employees perform better when they are operating “in a culture of positive reinforcement, support, and collaboration”.
So, how can you build effective communication with and between employees? The answer will depend on the size, structure and development phase of your organisation. However, here are some tips:
Weekly or biweekly one-on-one catch-ups
Quarterly development conversations
Team huddles
Regular, fun team-building ideas
Other ideas include offering regular engagement surveys and asking employees for feedback – both positive and negative. “Anonymous surveys encourage open and honest feedback, which can be used to create a safe space to provide feedback and ultimately to enhance the employees experience in the workplace,” says Davies.
Help staff grow and learn
Humans are inherently driven to grow and evolve – and this is true at work, too. One study recently revealed that over half of employees would choose extra training over free lunches at work, and one in four would prefer $1000 a year to spend on training rather than a $50-a-week pay rise.
In a world where technology is constantly changing, most employees understand the importance of upskilling and remaining relevant, says Davies.
“Employees are valuing the opportunity to grow, which in turn positively impacts their career trajectory.”
One business that prioritizes education is e-commerce fashion giant ASOS, which LinkedIn named UK’s most desirable company to work for in 2018. It offers ‘a range of bespoke and tailored learning solutions’ including a variety of mixed media and skills courses, along with career coaching, mentors within the business, team development days, career planning and sponsored qualification support.
Jenkins explains that: “Training and development opportunities are important because they provide incentive and reward for individual employees. People want to feel there is something in it for them, that they are growing, and there is purpose to their work as well. Doing transactional work isn’t enough for most people – they want more; they want to feel that they are adding value and that there is meaning in the work they do.”
Create a sense of purpose
Offering a competitive salary is an important way to attract top talent, however, creating a sense of purpose and autonomy is crucial when it comes to keeping employees engaged with their job.
The Harvard Business Review documents that 9 out of 10 employees are willing to earn less money to do more meaningful work, while a survey by LinkedIn found only 13 per cent of employees want to switch jobs because they want more money.
A healthy work-life balance is increasingly important for many employees, too, especially after COVID-19, as workers become accustomed to working from home.
In fact, a recent study found that half of employees would consider leaving their jobs if they weren’t afforded ‘some sort of flexibility’ post pandemic, and nine out of ten employees want flexibility around when and where they work.
“Flexible work is huge,” says Jenkins. “It’s a baseline expectation and the new way of working. Increasingly, it’s more of a ‘hybrid’ model; rather than a work/ life balance it’s a harmony of the two, a merging rather than a separation. It’s something both parties will have to negotiate.”
Flexible work is huge. It's a baseline expectation, and the new way of working.
Davies adds that employers may find themselves facing “a hidden war on talent” following the hiatus caused by the pandemic, with workers increasingly weighing up their priorities when it comes to flexibility and purpose.
“Salary still needs to be competitive and in line with the market rates, as does any incentive plans being offered, [but] we are seeing a wide range of employee benefits being offered.”
The key is to identify what your employees value most – whether that’s flexibility, wellness programs, mental health days or monetized incentives like bonuses, says Davies.
Find out what motivates your staff.
How do you know what your employees value? Davies is clear: you have to ask them. “It is important to survey your staff and find out what will motivate them and what will make the workplace appeal to them in order to increase retention and employee satisfaction."
Optimize your employee experience
Regardless of your industry, a business is only ever as strong as its employees. The best thing you can do for your customer experience, is optimize your employee experience, recommends Davies.
“With the ‘great resignation’ forecast in 2022, and worker shortages being experienced across many industries, employers need to be doing everything they can to retain staff.
“We know [focusing on retention] boosts morale and also saves on recruitment and training costs,” she explains, while prioritizing retention and employee engagement also affects reputation.
“If a business has high retention, it sends the message to top talent that it’s a desirable place to work,” Davies explains. “While workplaces have endured plenty of challenges during COVID-19, they had stressors long before the pandemic, and they will face stressors long after. We can’t stop these things from occurring, but businesses can boost employee engagement and retention by helping them feel valued, heard, supported and resilient.”
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