How to make sure good employees stay

When it comes to recruitment, I’ve found over the years that many businesses agonise over how to get the best people through the door but worry far less about what it takes to keep them there once they’ve arrived.

To a greater or lesser extent, businesses spend money advertising a vacancy on job boards or through recruitment agencies, invest valuable time sifting through shortlists (which can also be long-lists, if the sifting process isn’t up to scratch) and more time still sitting across the table from a parade of candidates at interview.

But once the successful candidate has accepted the job, been given a pass to get into the building, allocated a computer and an email address, and given an induction there’s a danger that we simply take their presence for granted and, to all intents and purposes, forget about them.

In HR, we know that there’s a very clear link between value and loyalty. The days when people stayed in a job for material gain are long gone. These days good employees want – and deserve – more from their employer in return for their continued presence at work.

Make no mistake, remuneration is still an important part of the deal. But generally, it’s a lever to attract people rather than one to retain them. The same goes for corporate benefits like cycle schemes, nursery vouchers and season ticket loans.

The businesses that successfully retain their best people are the ones that place an emotional investment in their teams and work to deliver value back into their workforce in less tangible ways.

Before we look at how to make sure you keep good people in the business, it’s worth just spending a moment looking at three reasons why it’s in your interests to do that.

Staff turnover is costly

Make no mistake, every time someone leaves your business it strips money out of your bottom line. According to Glassdoor, it costs an average of £3,000 to hire someone to fill a vacant role in the UK.

It can affect your reputation

High staff turnover raises questions about you as an employer. If you start to gain a reputation as a business that people want to leave, it becomes much harder to then attract people of equal or better calibre than those that have left.

It impacts on morale

When good people leave an organisation, that ripple is felt among those who are left behind. It’s a bit like a football team that starts to see its star players leaving – eventually the rest of the team starts to wonder if it’s possible to achieve its objectives.

Tips for keeping your best players

Here are some good strategies for ensuring you’re always on top of how your people are feeling, why they might be considering leaving and how to make sure staying is the most appealing option.

1. Understand why people want to leave

If you don’t already have them, introduce exit interviews so that departing employees can express their reasons for leaving.

Sometimes those reasons will be out of your hands to some extent – better immediate career development, much higher salary etc. But sometimes you might uncover a more endemic problem that you can solve – a lack of training or learning, for example; or a problem within processes or management.

2. Be clear on expectation – and monitor progress against objectives

Many people leave businesses because they find that what is expected of them on a day to day basis is out of sync with what they signed up for. Be clear on what the remit of their role is and ensure that people are given the right support, tools, and supervision to be able to do their job as easily as possible.

3. Exploit non-role-related skills

Your employees bring much more to your business than the ability to do the job they’re paid to do – so find a way of utilising their skills and passions and absorb them into other areas of your business.

Similarly, find ways of expanding an employee’s career horizons within your organisation by allowing them to lead change or innovation through skills that may have nothing to do with their immediate role.

4. Be visible to make them visible

A common complaint in exit interviews is that employees are anonymous to senior managers.

Good leaders take the time to know and understand the people who work for them. You don’t need to know their life story – small things, like remembering the name of a person’s child, make a big difference because it creates a sense of having made an impression.

5. Reward loyalty and success with opportunity

Most employees want to grow and learn in their jobs. By ensuring there is a structured process for career development and progression within your organisation you will reduce the chances of a good team member feeling like they have nowhere left to go in the business.

6. Be fair

No one likes to see a colleague being treated unfairly, whether that works for or against the individual in question. It fuels discontent and perpetuates a feeling among other employees that their own careers are not within their control.

By ensuring you and your management team take a consistent approach to the way in which every employee is managed, you’ll reduce the chances of creating pockets of discord in the office.

In the end, hanging on to your best people keeps them out of the clutches of your competitors, so it makes sense for everyone concerned to do what you can to make their job rewarding and satisfying both materially and emotionally.

 If you’d like to find out more about how Constantia Consulting can help your business develop better and more effective staff retention strategies, please get in touch for an informal chat.