Why Employee Retention is Crucial to Successful Business

How to retain your top performers

No one likes to lose their high performing employees to a competitor – particularly when a lot of time and money has been invested in hiring, training and nurturing your team. How can you ensure your team stay working at your organisation?

1. Identify your top performers and reward them

2. Offer top notch training - the need for businesses to nurture and develop talent has never been greater. A Reed Finance survey of senior finance leaders found that 60% of organisations believe they are no investing enough in training

3. Offer flexibility - Generation Y are not the 9-5 generation. Making life flexible for your employees can be a massive incentive to make them your employees stay.

4. Communication - Recognise when your employee performs well. Even a simple you “did a good job” “great job!” is one of the easiest ways to keep your staff motivated

5. Compensation - Ensure you give your employees the chance to earn more money. By rewarding staff for success financially, you can price your competitors out of the market.

6. Work facilities - A great environment will make employees want to come to work. Ensure the work space is modern and clean and provide simple perks like coffee & tea facilities

7. Non-Compete Agreements

8. Exit interview – The reasons employees leave can be powerful insights to help you retain in the future. Find out and take note of the reasons your employees might be leaving. You can learn from and use any feedback to make changes moving forward.

Why you fail to attract great candidates

A few years ago I was recruiting a finance director for an international brand. Their number one candidate was an individual from a direct competitor, however he did not accept their offer.

1. They expected a counter offer - They low balled on the candidate and their candidates existing employer made a compelling counter offer. Money was not the candidate’s major motivator but the better the devil you know was certainly a reality factor.

2. Candidate engagement - Failure to give clarity on the overall benefits package and notably the bonus/pension left doubts. Although bonus is always a discretionary benefit, the lack of explanation on the structure of the bonus killed the deal here. A simple call engaging the candidate and giving assurance could have made the difference.

As a recruiter you can only advise a candidate of the benefits to a certain extent. We are an outsider to the organisation, so the onus is on the hirer to take ownership of outlining the full benefits, as well as and engaging with the candidate at every step of the process. When it comes to bonus you need to be CLEAR on the structure, particularly if they are used to a bonus culture for success!

Fast forward 3 years, the candidate in question has seen their basic salary increase by 40% with the counter offering employer. They are now also in a true leadership position!

They were identified as a top performer by their existing employer, and subsequently were rewarded for this. Taking the counter offer could have been a mistake, and even though it was a marginally better offer on basic salary, the client had to make do with their number 2 option.

Not every employee who is counter offered has this outcome, but successful businesses who invest in their staff will fight tooth and nail to keep them.

Other businesses will let good talent reach their potential elsewhere if that cannot be fulfilled at their organisation.

The importance of succession planning

In my experience, good leaders are always thinking of succession planning and ensure they have top talent ready to step in to their shoes.

If there is no further progression for those individuals, this will encourage them to find new challenges either internally or externally.

Which leads to the questions, what type of leader are you? What do you offer in your organisation to retain employees?