Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

By Henry Brown

Are you finding it tough to keep hold of your employees? You wouldn’t be alone. We are in a talent type market right now which means that most companies are struggling to keep hold of their best talent. Keeping employees is actually much harder than hiring them, because there are always people looking for work, but there are never enough good companies that know how to look after their people so that the people want to stay.

Employees are a massive investment for your business, so hiring the right people and keeping them for the long haul is going to help you to build your business success. When your employee turnover is low but your engagement is very high, you’re going to find that you are more eligible for that employee retention credit. Companies will also be much more easily able to attract the right talent for the jobs that they have available, which means that it’s in your company’s best interest to take care of people and find ways to boost retention where you can. Retaining your team is a full time job, so make sure that you have good people on board to help you with it.

You can choose to outsource this part of your business if you want to, but you do need to make sure you are looking at it properly so that you are giving your employee retention efforts your best attempt. So here is how to improve your employer’s attention and stop people from leaving your business in droves.

–Hire the right people in the first place. There is a strong connection between employee engagement and employee turnover. People who are engaged and not interested in their work are not going to hang around for very long because even though we work to live, we still need to feel interested and engaged in what we are doing. It’s a very fair thing for people to be happy in their work, and it’s up to you as an employer to make that happen. People can’t just make themselves happy in a business that’s not theirs, she needs to look at your current hiring patterns and see whether you are hiring the right people in the first place.

-Put a lot of effort into your onboarding experience. When you are confident that you have the right person on board, you need to make boarding a priority. It’s vital that you take the time to train people properly into their position. Even if they’re coming from a background that means they have experienced when they join you, that doesn’t mean they have necessarily got the experience for your specific business. So, if you know you have the right fit then you need to take the time to train people. Not only does this give them confidence in you as an employer, but it makes them feel more confident in their jobs in general.

-Create a culture of feedback that you’ve been trying to create. You need to have a thick skin and allow people to tell you when things are wrong. How are you going to learn anything as an employer if you don’t have people talk to you about what the problems are in your business? If you want to be an effective employer, then you need to create cultures of both recognition and feedback so people feel like they can talk to you. Open door policy is a good way to begin that, but so is asking people for their thoughts and opinions. This will make you a far more respected leader than you are right now.

-Put money into developing your employees. If you invest in the people who are spending their time working for you and making your business a success, then you are going to get that investment back. Employee development is key for engagement and retention so prioritize your internal hires and promote from within where you can. When you provide the right opportunities for mentorship and coaching and you make your long term employee goals solid, people will have more respect for you. This is exactly what you need for long term retention success.

Employee retention is about so much more than pizza parties and dress down Friday; it’s about learning what it is that makes your people tick and going with it! Make them happen and you create loyal people who want to work for you for longer.

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Henry Brown is an online marketing executive. When he isn’t talking shop, he’s roaming the streets of London, uncovering the extra-ordinary in the ordinary.