"RETENTION OF THE RIGHT EMPLOYEE IS THE REASON OF GAIN AND GROWTH!!!"

Employee retention refers to the ability of an organization to retain its employees. Employee retention can be represented by a simple statistic (for example, a retention rate of 80% usually indicates that an organization kept 80% of its employees in a given period.

HOW TO MAINTAIN THE RETENTION

Hiring employees is just a start to creating a strong work force. Next, you have to keep them. High employee turnover costs business owners in time and productivity. Try these tactics to retain your employees.

Hiring employees is just a start to creating a strong work force. Next, you have to keep them. High employee turnover costs business owners in time and productivity. Try these tactics to retain your employees.

– Offer a competitive benefits package that fits your employees’ needs. Providing health insurance, life insurance and a retirement-savings plan is essential in retaining employees. But other perks, such as flextime and the option of telecommuting, go a long way to show employees you are willing to accommodate their outside lives.

– Provide some small perks. Free bagels on Fridays and dry-cleaning pickup and delivery may seem insignificant to you, but if they help employees better manage their lives, they’ll appreciate it and may be more likely to stick around.

– Use contests and incentives to help keep workers motivated and feeling rewarded. Done right, these kinds of programs can keep employees focused and excited about their jobs.

– Conduct “stay” interviews. In addition to performing exit interviews to learn why employees are leaving, consider asking longer-tenured employees why they stay. Ask questions such as: Why did you come to work here? Why have you stayed? What would make you leave? And what are your nonnegotiable issues? What about your managers? What would you change or improve? Then use that information to strengthen your employee-retention strategies.

– Promote from within whenever possible. And give employees a clear path of advancement. Employees will become frustrated and may stop trying if they see no clear future for themselves at your company.

– Foster employee development. This could be training to learn a new job skill or tuition reimbursement to help further your employee’s education.

– Create open communication between employees and management. Hold regular meetings in which employees can offer ideas and ask questions. Have an open-door policy that encourages employees to speak frankly with their managers without fear of repercussion.

– Get managers involved. Require your managers to spend time coaching employees, helping good performers move to new positions and minimizing poor performance.

– Communicate your business’s mission. Feeling connected to the organization’s goals is one way to keep employees mentally and emotionally tied to your company.

– Offer financial rewards. Consider offering stock options or other financial awards for employees who meet performance goals and stay for a predetermined time period, say, three or five years. Also, provide meaningful annual raises. Nothing dashes employee enthusiasm more than a paltry raise. If you can afford it, give more to your top performers. Or, if you don’t want to be stuck with large permanent increases, create a bonus structure where employees can earn an annual bonus if they meet prespecified performance goals.

– Make sure employees know what you expect of them. It may seem basic, but often in small companies, employees have a wide breadth of responsibilities. If they don’t know exactly what their jobs entail and what you need from them, they can’t perform up to standard, and morale can begin to dip.

– Hire a human-resources professional. If your company is nearing 100 employees, consider hiring a human-resources director to oversee and streamline your employee structure and processes. Putting one person in charge of managing employee benefits, perks, reviews and related tasks takes a huge load off of you and makes sure employees are treated fairly. HR managers are also more up to date on employment laws and trends. They can set up various programs and perks you may not have known existed.

WHY RETENTION IS VERY IMPORTANT????

Retention strategies are important because they help create a positive work environment and strengthen an employee's commitment to the organization. Strategies that target employee engagement, such as team-builders and community involvement, increase company morale and give employees a sense of pride in what they do.

Retaining a positive and motivated staff is vital to an organization's success. High employee turnover increases expenses and also has a negative effect on company morale. Implementing an employee retention program is an effective way of making sure key workers remain employed while maintaining job performance and productivity.

Manage Employee Turnover

Employers implement retention strategies to manage employee turnover and attract quality employees into the organization. Retention programs focus on the relationship between management and their workers. Competitive pay, benefits, employee recognition and employee assistance programs are all apart of a company's attempt to maintain employee satisfaction. Human resources specialists utilize feedback they receive from exit interviews and focus groups to improve employee relations and reduce turnover.

Cost Effective

A company can significantly benefit from employee retention programs because of a direct effect on an employer’s bottom line. High turnover can be very expensive. According to the Society for Human Resources Management, “employee replacement costs can reach as high as 50 to 60 percent of an employee’s annual salary.” Strategies geared towards retaining good workers helps offset employee replacement costs and reduces the indirect costs such as decreased productivity and lost clients.

Maintain Performance And Productivity

Employee retention practices help support an organization’s productivity. Recruiting and training new employees takes time. An unfilled position means work is not getting done. Even if a position is filled, there is still a learning curve most employees must overcome before their work becomes profitable. Taking the necessary steps to keep current workers satisfied with their roles will ensure productivity is not interrupted.

Create the Right Culture

Finding employees who will feel a strong bond with your company starts with creating an environment that attracts those employees. Your company culture should match the type of employee you want to employ, whether you opt for a by-the-book, strict workplace or a more casual, laid-back atmosphere.

Hire the Right Employees

As you're screening candidates, pay close attention to signs that you may have a job-hopper. While there's nothing wrong with someone switching jobs if it provides career advancement, look for someone who is interested in growing with your company rather than getting experience to take somewhere else.

Offer Training

Businesses expect their professionals to arrive fully trained and certified. Yet too many aren't willing to invest in helping them maintain those credentials. Whether you send employees to a learning center or you provide membership to one of the many e-learning sites available, when you take your employees' education seriously, they see it as an investment in their career.

Provide Guidance

Your employees should be fully aware of their job duties and how they're doing in performing them. You can accomplish this by first having a job plan in place and providing regular feedback on an employee's performance. If an employee feels confused about his role in your organization, he's more likely to feel disgruntled and begin searching for something else.

Pay Well

As difficult as it is to pay competitive salaries when funds are low and budgets are tight, calculate the cost to replace employees. It can cost as much as 30 percent to 50 percent of an entry-level employee's annual salary just to replace him. Employees often find they can enjoy a 10 to 20 percent salary increase by simply moving from one company to the next, which makes jumping ship attractive.

Don't Punish Competence

Managers often spend much of their time on employees who are struggling, leaving the talented ones completely neglected. Over time, this can lead to resentment as star employees start to feel unnoticed and unsupported. Managers must make an effort to let top performers know their hard work isn't going unnoticed.

Be More Flexible

Workers have expressed a preference for flexible working conditions. If you expect your best employee to answer his phone when a client calls at seven o'clock on a Friday night, you should also understand when that employee comes in late one morning or needs to take off early.

Offer Benefits

Small businesses often struggle to compete with larger corporations in providing benefits. While you don't have to beat big business in the healthcare options you offer, you can offer things they won't get elsewhere, such as the ability to work from home, more flexible vacation offerings, and performance bonuses.

Provide Unique Perks

Another way businesses can compete without breaking the budget is through offering perks they can't get elsewhere. Silicon Valley has become notorious for its free meals and nap pods, but you can increase retention by coming up with creative perks. Use your connections to get free VIP tickets to special events or special discounts at local retailers.

Don't Take Yourself Too Seriously

As much work as you try make your company attractive to talented people, the truth is employees might be leaving because of their bosses. In fact, research has shown people tend to quit their bosses, not companies. If you can cultivate an environment where employees feel rewarded and gratified, you'll already be ahead of a great deal of other bosses out there.

Enhances Recruitment

Effective retention strategies often begin during the employee recruitment process. Employees are more inclined to remain with a company that fulfills the promises made when their employment offer was extended. Companies that provide a realistic view of their corporate environment, advancement opportunities and job expectations to new hires can positively influence employee retention.

Increases Morale

Increases Morale. Employees that enjoy what they do and the atmosphere in which they work are more likely to remain employed with their company. Retention strategies are important because they help create a positive work environment and strengthen an employee's commitment to the organization.

• Strategies that target employee engagement, such as team-builders and community involvement, increase company morale and give employees a sense of pride in what they do.

THE RETENTION STRATEGY

Key strategies. Good retention starts from the time you hire employees to the time they leave your company. See how tweaking some of your employment practices can have a big impact on employee retention: Recruitment and hiring. It's worth spending time and effort on recruiting.

ou go to considerable trouble and expense to identify, interview, and hire great employees for your organization. So retaining them should also be a top priority. Luckily, most good retention practices are inexpensive to implement.Effective retention

To understand how to retain good employees, you first need to know what they’re looking for. Today, the best employees want:

• Career development opportunities and a chance to grow in their chosen field
• Regular feedback on how both they and the company are doing
• A chance to contribute directly to the organization and be recognized for doing so
• Flexible work schedules that recognize their need for work/life balance
• A good salary or wage and an opportunity to increase it over time
• Benefits tailored to their individual needs

Key strategies

Good retention starts from the time you hire employees to the time they leave your company. See how tweaking some of your employment practices can have a big impact on employee retention:

• Recruitment and hiring. It’s worth spending time and effort on recruiting. When there’s a good match between employees and your organization, retention is less likely to be an issue.
• Orientation and on boarding. Again, it’s worth having good practices in place. Treating employees right in the critical early stages of employment has been proven to enhance retention.
• Training and development. Training and development are key factors in helping employees grow with your company and stay marketable in their field.
• Performance evaluation. When employees know what they’re doing well and where they need to improve, both they and your organization benefit.
• Pay and benefits. While today many employees tend to rate factors such as career development higher than pay, good pay and benefits still count.
• Internal communication. Effective communication can help ensure that employees to want to stay with your company. Employees need to know—and be reminded on a regular basis—how the organization is doing and what they can do to help.
• Termination and outplacement. Employees who leave on good terms are much more likely to recommend your company, and in doing so, help you attract and retain future employees.

Engage employees to increase retention

Engaging your employees—that is, making sure that they are committed and productive in their work—can benefit you as much as it benefits employees.

If you hire the right employees, chances are good they’ll be engaged—committed to your business and happy in their work. But to ensure ongoing engagement, you as an employer must play a major role, particularly when it comes to communication. Consider these five strategies:

• Be clear on what your business stands for. Your company’s mission and vision and brand must be front and center in everything you do.
• Communicate well and often. Your employees need to know—on a continuous basis—how both they and your company are doing.
• Understand generational differences. To get the best out of all your employees, know what motivates different generations.
• Find out what your employees need. Ask your employees on a regular basis how they’re doing, and be ready to follow up on their input.
• Empower all employees to do their best. Provide the leadership, resources, and training your employees need to realize their potential.

Understanding what engages employees can help during all phases of the employment cycle—from recruitment to training to performance assessment and beyond. It’s also much easier to retain employees who are engaged and committed to your institution’s success. Improving retention rates doesn't have to be difficult. By being a positive role model and directly connecting with your employees, you'll be more likely to understand what they need to continue to help your business thrive.