How to Retain Employees

This is a guide for employee engagement management. This is a key point in HR and Industrial psychology. 

Employees are your most valuable assets and they deserve to be treated as such. Because turnover is an expensive ordeal, not just for retraining but for HR to find a good (sometimes urgent) replacement and for other staff to cover their job duties.

Obviously long-term tenures with your company, means those employees get more valuable over time and your teams develop higher congruity and productivity. This has huge implication for the success of your company or organization. This article is intended for HR managers and CEOs. 

Here are some tips to improve employee engagement, satisfaction and of course, retention. 

• The best marriages have a ratio of positive to negative interaction of 7:1, for employees you always want praise to out-do criticism. At least have a ratio of 3:1 for praise to constructive criticism. This is a golden rule of any supervisor.
• In recruitment, use video interviews and social media to quickly judge social fit.
• Look at all aspects of a person before you hire them, are they the kind of person who would add value to your organization, besides just their job title? Are they well suited to their role in terms of personality-fit?

• Allow candidates with highest "cultural fit" with your organization to leap-frog more experienced candidates
• Increase pay on a 6-month rate, even if the increase is minimal, the psychological advantages of this are huge.
• Invest in the online education of your staff, have at least 2 annual staff workshops that emphasize some kind of training or education. It's important employees know that management wants them to upgrade themselves and be an optimal learning environment. Give time to employees to self-administer and participate in online learning and make what courses they are taking public to the entire company to stimulate a learning environment. 

• Create regular employee surveys and input on how the company could better be run. The employees must know that the organization is fluid and dynamic, not just some top down pyramid that will never change.
• Provide regular, friendly and appropriate feedback. Do it in a question basis, "what could you have done better this week?", what situations arose that you learned from? What mistakes did you make and what can you do that they won't happen again? Don't boss, stimulate self-reporting and self-correction.
• Keep an eye out for gender balance and diversity in your employees, to maximize the human balance of your company's microcosm. As superficial as it sounds, the social rewards of good opposite gender relations are well-known. 

• Treat employees as customers of management. If your company has a customer-centric approach but don't treat their employees with the utmost dignity, clearly employees will pick up on this.
• Hire for social-fit with company employees, not just skill-set (that which can be taught)
• Create meaningful experiences for employees, and an atmosphere of open communication where employees problems are dealt with and not ignored until they boil over.

• Ensure new employees bond deeply with their new teammates and the company brand. Orient them properly, have a professional training program and enough dedicated support that they set up to succeed, not set up to fail or risk that they will view the company as incompetent and or disorganized. Have a mentor program. 
• Recruit the right personality, for the right job
• Have a company wide employee engagement plan as part of your HR methodology. 
• Do have team building exercise (brainstorming, recreational, social, meetings)
• Have a member of HR check in with them on a periodic basis. More often, when they are experiencing known stressors in their personal life. 

• Do practice transparent communication. Share meeting notes, free exchange of information, company wide IM, whatever it takes. 
• Have attractive employee benefits
• Identify early stages of burn-out, low job satisfaction, boredom, etc....and deal with it before it escalates.
• Recognize that employees require learning opps and socialization to truly find fulfillment

• Offer free coffee, beverages, and 1 hour massages or hair-dressing q 3 months. These perks are small, but seem like reasons your company cares. Some companies offer free gym memberships, free lunch, parking, public transport or other coupon systems. 
• Display a positive social culture on your company social media. This is very important, to project that you are a young, dynamic and progressive place to work.
• Participate as an organization in charities that give back to the community. Collective displays of altruism bonds teams. 
• Be honest with candidates about how your company functions, and if there is opportunity for advancement, if they are allowed to use their mobile phone or social media while working, be clear about your organization's norms, so there are no surprises later on. Dishonesty at any level can quickly sour employee satisfaction.

• Deal with firing of employees professionally and with class, if you fire their friends in a poor showing, employees will remember this.
• Management and supervisors, at all costs, must avoid talking about an employees in the 3rd person while they are within listening range, this has devastating costs to morale. (you may not think you are within ear range, but what if you are? Always be behind closed doors when exhibiting managerial review dialogues).
• Make all employees feel valued and above all "safe" (job security, etc.)
• Make strides to lengthen the tenure of your very best people (the best ROI), this will allow your company to benefit the most from the best social capital.

• Accept the natural cadence of turnover, but strive to always troubleshoot those individuals in your organization that are most vulnerable (minorities, high work load, more stress, customer facing, etc.)
• For A players, quality employees, attempt to promote or find new roles for them to keep their talent.
• For B or C players, expect that they will only be at your company for a duration of 6 months to 2 years typically.
• Know the costs and have analytics on the cost of retention in your company, but don't simply treat employees as $ investments, treat them as people. 
• Create performance bonuses and incentives for higher performance, enough to keep motivation high.
• Develop a company wide culture that fosters intrinsic (self-directed) not extrinsic (punishments) forms of motivation. The most important element of this are managers that lead by example (working longer hours than employees, not slacking, etc.)

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 Michael Spencer is a prolific copywriter, blogger and digital marketing enthusiast, to read more of his articles click on the following footer: