Strategies to Secure Long-Term Employee Commitment and Growth
In the last year and a half, millions of employees from multiple sectors around the world have joined a mass exodus from the workplace. Many have tried explaining the mass exodus, but reports indicate it may be due to inadequate salaries, limited career advancement, poor work-life balances, general unhappiness with management or the company and numerous other reasons.
This so-called Great Resignation, spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic, has turned employment into a worker’s market. TikTok users have coined phrases such as?“quiet quitting”?and “act your wage” as employees find community with others who don’t feel properly valued or appreciated by their workplaces.
As employees decide what’s right for them, employers are having to reconsider what actually makes their company worth working for. If you feel like your business may be at risk of losing top talent, or you have already begun losing your best workers to the Great Resignation, it is probably time to consider some employee retention strategies.
Here are 15 effective strategies to boost employee job satisfaction and help you hold on to your best workers.
1. Offer Competitive Base Salaries or Hourly Wages
Offering a wage worthy of sacrifice and hard work should be the number one priority when making your employees feel their work is valued. Proper compensation is far and away more important than any other item on this list; you will not retain employees effectively unless you pay them what their time is worth.
Not only should employees be paid fairly for their time and work, they should also be able to afford the cost of living where they live, their wages should be regularly adjusted for rising inflation and they should be additionally compensated as their experience level with the work grows. Additionally, every time their responsibility increases, so too should workers’ reward increase.
2. Let Your Employees Work From Home
According to Upwork’s “Future of Workforce Pulse Report,” 36.2 million Americans will be working remotely in 2025—an increase of nearly 90% since before the COVID-19 pandemic. Remote work isn’t just convenient to reduce the spread of disease, but has been shown to make employees happier and more productive at work. With modern technology, working entirely (or even partially) from home is possible in a vast array of industries.
Remote work will not likely be a permanent solution for many businesses, and more and more Americans return to offices each month, but offering flexible work-from-home options may be an incentive to keep the best employees with your company for the long run.
3. Provide Flexible Scheduling and Reduced Workdays
Along with offering remote work, studies from the Society for Human Resource Management also show businesses offering more flexible work options maintain significantly better worker retention. Even before the pandemic made work-from-home a norm, a 2019 study showed nearly two-thirds of workers found themselves more productive outside of a traditional office due to fewer interruptions, fewer distractions and less commuting. Creativity can’t always be turned on like a faucet, so offering your employees flexible hours encourages them to find the times they will be most efficient and productive to focus attention on the work.
4. Encourage and Promote a Work-Life Balance
Fourth on our list of key retention strategies for businesses is to encourage and promote a good work-life balance—not just for your employees, but for yourself, too. Especially after the pandemic drastically changed how employees value work, more and more workers cite work-life balance as the reason they consider new jobs or the reason they have refused opportunities. That work-life balance could come by means of remote work, flexible scheduling or reduced workdays, as mentioned above, or simpler acts such as encouraging employees not to check email or answer work questions via phone unless at work or on the job. Respecting employees’ time away from work is key to maintaining a?healthy working relationship?with them.
5. Recognize and Reward Your Employees for Their Work
Employees who feel appropriately recognized and rewarded by workplaces are much easier to retain long term, but studies also show those employees will work harder and be more productive. Unfortunately, over 80% of American employees say they don’t feel recognized or rewarded. A report by the Brandon Hall Group found companies that prioritize recognizing their employees multiple times per month are 41% more likely to see increased employee retention and 34% more likely to see increased employee engagement.
There are numerous ways to recognize and reward your employees, but it’s important to make sure you prioritize both social recognition and monetary rewards. It feels good to not only be recognized for our work, but to be publicly recognized, as it helps everyone know when others are appreciated, too. Financial rewards, whether in the form of straightforward cash, gift cards or even other perks such as paid time off, are among the most important and most successful rewards you can offer an employee. Consider asking employees open-ended questions about what they’d like in terms of rewards, too.
6. Create a Culture That Employees Want To Be Part Of
Another key retention strategy is creating a work culture that your employees want to be part of. A 2019 Glassdoor study found that a company’s culture matters significantly not only to employees who are considering a job (77% said they would consider a company’s culture), but also to employees staying in their jobs. In fact, nearly two-thirds of employees cited a good company culture as one of the main reasons they elect not to leave.
Developing a great company culture may involve implementing many of the retention strategies detailed in this list. These efforts might include rewarding your employees not just for success but for effort, creating a meaningful mission for your company and involving your employees in creative decision making about the present and future of your organization’s mission.
7. Build Employee Engagement
One of the most important strategies for employee retention is to build up your workers’ engagement with your organization. A disengaged employee may have lower morale, cause losses in productivity and generally bring down your company. Make sure to give your employees a voice by making them feel listened to and showing them that their opinions matter.
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Try introducing opportunities for your employees to feel safe giving candid feedback. It is likely that your workers may know more about the best ways to accomplish a given task than you do if they have been doing it longer, so giving them the opportunity to communicate and collaborate on improvements to workflow and the work environment will help employees feel like they had a hand in developing culture and ensure they remain engaged with the company.
8. Create an Emphasis on Teamwork
Another key part of employee retention in some environments is creating a strong emphasis on teamwork. Creating chances for collaboration—including interdepartmental collaboration—can promote not only teamwork, but overall employee engagement. Strong teamwork not only encourages bonding between coworkers, which can create a better overall culture, but it also drives higher overall performance. Good teamwork will help managers and employees pair up strengths and weaknesses within departments and more strategically balance the workload.
9. Reduce Employee Burnout
A 2020 Gallup report,?Employee Burnout: Causes and Cures, found that 76% of employees sometimes experience burnout on the job and 28% stating they feel burnout “often” or “always.” While it is often assumed burnout is caused by overwork and can be solved by taking days off or reducing work hours, Gallup’s study found burnout is actually more influenced by how employees experience their workload than the literal number of hours they work. Employees who feel more engaged by their work, who are properly recognized and rewarded and who are offered better job flexibility via reduced hours, remote work or flexible scheduling actually report higher well-being.
The Gallup report found the top five factors that lead to employee burnout are:
10. Provide Wellness Offerings
The COVID-19 pandemic has reminded us that both physical and mental health are paramount to a happy, functional society. Taking care of your employees’ health doesn’t just include offering things such as flexible scheduling or remote working. You should also make sure that your workplace is clean and hygienic with health and safety protocols in place and that you have strict rules against employees coming to work while sick. This also means providing sick pay to incentivize employees required to be at a location to stay home when sick. Make sure to also provide?quality health insurance?with excellent coverage and numerous tiers and options so your employees know their health is valued.
11. Give Other Job Perks
While many of the retention strategies on our list this far may be seen as perks of a specific job, job perks can come in a number of shapes and forms. In addition to offering the basics, such as remote work, flexible schedules and good healthcare, you can give your employees discounts on things such as cell phone service, travel costs, car rentals, food and more. You can also make your own connections with local businesses that might be happy to offer discounts on products.
12. Foster Growth and Offer Professional and Personal Development
A great business recognizes how important training is during the onboarding process of an employee, but a business with strong employee retention also recognizes the value of continuing to invest in training and upskilling employees. Upskilling your employees by investing time and resources and providing them access to additional education and training within their field not only makes them happier and more likely to stay with your company, but also makes your company stronger as a whole.
13. Hire for the Cultural Fit
Many people can learn a specific skill or develop certain expertise. But not just anyone fits into an existing team nor shares the cultural values of your employees and your company. Hiring for the cultural fit can ensure long-term employee retention because these new hires will mesh well with the team quicker, making everyone more comfortable and getting productivity back on track faster.
14. Manage for Retention
A?2018 report on the Employee Experience by Udemy?found nearly 50% of employees quit their job because of a bad manager. A good manager, on the other hand, acts not as a “boss” but as a “coach.” The key difference being that while a boss is seen as an unsatisfiable source of demand micromanaging every aspect of employees’ work, a coach knows their employees are players on a team. A good employer/coach works to guide employees in the right direction by offering advice, support and goals while still allowing their workers to have a high degree of autonomy.
15. Know When It’s Time To Say Goodbye
Unfortunately, no amount of strategy will guarantee perfect employee retention. At some point, your employees must move on—either to retire or to find work more suited to what they’re looking for. Knowing when it’s time to say goodbye and handling employee offboarding effectively and well is just as important for overall employee retention as any of these other strategies. Remaining employees should know they will be well taken care of whenever they do move on themselves.
Why Employees Leave and Why They Stay
Encouraging employees to stay is important, but knowing why employees leave can be more important to developing an effective retention strategy. Offboarding, the process of closing the employment of a departing employee, can be just as important as onboarding. Offboarding can help encourage an amicable separation, ensures the transfer of knowledge and secures the company’s property and data as well as help a company learn why an employee is leaving and what it might be able to do in the future to keep employees.
First Phoenix Solutions is your strategic partner in talent acquisition, offering tailored solutions to help you achieve your hiring goals efficiently. With our vast network and expertise, we connect you with top-tier talent that aligns perfectly with your specific requirements. Our client-centric approach ensures a seamless and positive candidate experience, reflecting positively on your employer brand. Whether you need executive placements, specialized skill sets, or bulk hiring solutions, we have the resources and expertise to deliver. Embracing innovation and strategic thinking, First Phoenix Solutions empowers your organization to build a high-performing workforce that drives sustainable growth and success in the competitive talent market. With our comprehensive support throughout the recruitment process, you can focus on your core business while we take care of finding the best talent for your team.