6 Practical Ways to Retain Your Employees

With the combination of the ‘Great Resignation’ still seemingly in full swing, job-hopping increasingly becoming the norm and the current state of the economy - retaining your employees should be at the very top of every priority list.

We’ve known for some time now that fruit bowls, beer fridges and pool tables simply aren’t enough to keep employees from looking elsewhere anymore. Sure, they are nice to have and yes, there’s an argument for the part those benefits play in the company culture. But the reality is, along with hybrid and remote work options these have simply become the ‘new normal'. Making it harder to justify as a convincing retention tool.

So what do employees want, and why do they move on?

Let’s face it, you can’t build an employee retention strategy if you don’t understand the problem in the first place. The reasons below come up repeatedly as the main motivators that make employees move on from their current roles.

Let’s have a look:

• Better opportunities (better pay, opportunities for growth and promotion, better training)
• Poor management and toxic culture
• Feeling burnt out and lack of healthy work-life boundaries
• Lack of appreciation and failure to recognise performance
• Lack of flexible work options (offering flexibility and trust to manage their own time and workload. Not allowing remote/hybrid work options)
• Boredom, seeking a change or new challenge

This list is by no means exhaustive, but they are the reasons that come up most often. Question is, what can you do about it?

Enter our suggestions of 6 practical ways to retain your employees

#1 Reduce burnout and employees feeling overworked

Given the economic crisis, it might be tempting to put a halt on your recruitment and instead divvy out the work between your existing workforce. On the surface, it’s understandable and may look like a short-term win. But over the course of a few months, you’ll find it hurts morale and will start to eat into your recruitment and retention costs as employees leave and share their experiences with other candidates.

It's often assumed that burnout is caused simply by working too many hours, however, studies have found that instead, it’s more often connected to how employees feel about their workload or a combination of the two.

So how do you deal with the problem? Often it’s as simple as communication, creating an environment where an employee feels comfortable enough to be able to speak freely about their workload and to request the support they need. This type of honesty should then be met with an atmosphere of support, not leave the employee feeling like they are somehow inadequate or like they’ve let the side down.

Another strategy would be to evaluate and prioritise workloads. Seems simple enough, but you would be surprised at how often this is overlooked.

#2 Reward efforts, not just results

Human capital has never been more important and the reality is that everyone likes to feel valued, especially in the workplace. We all know this, we all feel this within ourselves, yet so often formal recognition programs are simply overlooked or only focused on numbers.

Build a culture of recognition that includes effort as well as results. Make a constructive effort to genuinely recognise people for taking initiative, being proactive or going out of their way to help others in their team for example. Recognising an employee for their efforts demonstrates to them, as well as their peers, that the company values all contributions to its success and that made to the individual teams.

It’s a simple way to illustrate the company’s investment and commitment to all employees and inspire them to feel connected, confident and cared about. Not to mention being a motivator to continue to do great work. Do this and you’ll be leveraging the full force of human potential at work.

#3 Develop great managers

We all know the saying, “people leave managers, not companies”. Managers, more than any other factor, influence team engagement and performance. Just as a damaging interaction with a manager can set the tone for an employee’s entire experience, the opposite is also true.  

While there are countless management styles, the one thing that all great managers have in common is that they know how to connect with people. Managers who have effective, authentic interactions with their team tend to have better conversations and see greater performance results and higher engagement.

So how do you know where you stand? Frustrations around management can range from feeling micromanaged, overlooked, and lack of trust/transparency to making informal threats or inappropriate advances. The best place to start is by collecting regular feedback. And before you go thinking “annual review”, let us stop you there, once a year is simply not enough. If you want their honest feedback you need to create a space where people feel at ease – a monthly or quarterly anonymous survey for example.

Now you know where the sticky points are, you simply address them. If they feel there’s a lack of transparency make an effort to communicate better.

Be mindful of how you react to feedback, it will determine how willing they are to share with you moving forward.

#4 Adults, responsibility and people being people

If there’s one takeaway from the last couple of years, it’s that employee well-being can’t be separated from productivity. Treat people like people, treat them like adults. This can mean flexible scheduling, remote work, or giving someone free reign to take a project and run with it.

Constantly being told what to do often prevents people from being invested. While autonomy and choice encourage productivity, efficiency and improve engagement.

We all have ups and downs, but if you treat your employees like adults and demonstrate trust you will find yourself with a recipe that ultimately boosts morale and leadership. An environment that is much more likely to make them stay.

#4 Start as you mean to go on with better onboarding

All of the individual moments of an employee’s experience play a role in how that person feels about the company’s purpose, brand and culture – making a good first impression all starts with a good onboarding process.

The key is to capture your new employee’s excitement about starting a new role while minimising potential challenges.  The typical endless rounds of paperwork and tedious processes, combined with something as small as frustrations around getting the software to work or daunting expectations for their first month can very quickly lead to uncertainty and stress. Feelings that directly affect employee engagement, retention, performance and development.

Instead, create an onboarding process that takes care of the above but also reflects your company’s purpose, culture and branding. For example, how are the values reflected in your onboarding process? It shouldn’t be boring, it should run smoothly and it should reflect what the business stands for. In short, start as you mean to go on.  

#5 Alternating work responsibilities

You know what they say, “change is as good as a holiday”. Boredom can creep in when employees are faced with repetitive work that can feel endless or experience a lack of challenge. Add unsatisfying to that list and you have a recipe for a swift exit plan.  

An easy way to address the problem can be as simple as offering someone the opportunity to get involved in a new project or to join a different department.

This is a simple, behavioural solution that can boost your team by driving personal growth while also strengthening team relationships and generating fresh ideas.

#6 Encourage and promote work-life balance

Next up on our list of 6 practical employee retention strategies is to encourage and promote a good work-life balance. Now I know what you are thinking – “we are doing all that already, it even says so on our website!” Are you though?

Work-life balance isn’t just a buzzword. Having a culture of work-life balance is more than having policies around remote, hybrid or flexible work. These are of little use if employees are constantly receiving emails and calls from you well after hours. Respecting employees’ time away is central to fostering a healthy work-life balance.

The same goes for the benefits you offer around health and well-being. Perhaps you have an on-site gym or maybe your employees have access to a free mental health check-in service for example. So often these have been put in place with all the best intentions, only to find that nobody takes advantage of them because of some unspoken cultural norms or unwritten rules.

This is where it’s key for leadership to lead from the front. If employees see the buy-in and participation from management, they are far more likely to make use of it themselves.

This, combined with healthy boundaries around time, all demonstrate a real commitment to a culture of health and well-being that your employees can get behind and that will inspire them to stay year after year.

Final Thoughts

There is no doubt that money has a role to play in retaining employees. But it’s often the feeling of being overlooked, overworked, lack of opportunity and frustrations around feeling stagnant in their career that causes people to start looking elsewhere.

A smart employee retention strategy can be as simple as cultivating a more well-balanced culture, a change in behaviour and communicating better.

Implementing these 6 suggestions can help amplify job satisfaction, boost engagement and ultimately help you avoid high recruitment costs.  Not to mention protect your employer brand by ensuring people who do leave the organisation only have good things to say.