How to Improve Employee Retention

Losing staff unexpectedly can really dent the growth of your business, especially in the early stages when you’re still small. Finding, hiring, and training a new member of staff can be very expensive to do, especially if you need someone with particular skills or qualifications. Instead of trying to find new staff, work on your employee retention, to encourage people to stay with your company for longer, instead of looking for a new job.

 

Hire Selectively

 

You can improve retention by being smart about your hiring from the beginning. If you hire more selectively, you can bring in people less likely to jump ship. As well as looking for the right academic qualifications, skills, and experience, pay close attention to signs of diligence, attitude, and integrity as you interview people as well.

 

Look at their work history. How many jobs have they had throughout their career? How long have they stayed in past jobs? Do they tend to stay for several years, or do they have a pattern of working somewhere for a year and then moving on?

 

Why did they leave their last job? If they were looking for more growth opportunities, is this something you can offer them in order to make sure they stay with you longer than they stayed with their previous employer.

 

Pay Them Right

 

One of the most common reasons for people to seek a new job is to look for a higher salary. Keep a close eye on compensation standards in your industry. Are you paying your team fairly? Make sure that you offer pay rises in line with inflation so staff don’t feel underpaid.

 

Bonuses and benefits packages can be a great addition to basic salary too to make people feel more valued and more like staying with you. Christmas or performance-based bonuses will always be appreciated.

 

Set up a tempting benefits package, offering things like discounts with other businesses, ways to earn extra days off, help to buy travel passes or access to a health insurance company. These perks make your team feel valued, and help you to compete with other employers in the market.  Health insurance is an especially popular option, as medical bills can really hit someone’s personal finances. By offering this, you offer them security.

 

Offer Flexible Work Schedules

 

Employees are looking more and more for the option to work more flexibly. While you can still have core office hours, so you’re open at the right times to work with your customers or clients, you should still offer the option to work more flexibility with working hours when people needed.

 

This could mean allowing people to adjust their hours to come in early, so they can leave early to collect a child from school or allow them to come in late and work a little later, so they can fit in an early dentist appointment. Being willing to work with people on other demands on their time helps your employees to keep a better work-life balance, so they’ll have more energy and be more productive.

 

If possible, allow your staff to work remotely when they need to as well. Whether they want one day a week to catch up with admin tasks without the distractions of the office or need to stay at home to care for an unwell child, try to work with them on these requests.

 

On the other end of the scale, if the job requires travel or late nights, make sure that the people you hire are happy to do this, and appropriately rewarded for doing so.

 

Get Your Work Environment And Company Culture

 

A comfortable work environment is important to keep the staff happy. While people won’t leave just because they don’t like your office, a work environment that is always cold, cramped, or dirty, will soon put people off coming to work every day. Make sure your office is kept clean and inviting. Additionally, ensure that every member of your team has enough space to work, with the appropriate office electronics and equipment that they need to work effectively.

 

Company culture is also important. Keep yours positive by not keeping hires who are unpleasant to work with. You shouldn’t keep on anyone who is difficult, rude, or discriminatory. Make your company culture clear by being proactive about hiring people who fit your values.

 

Create a supportive atmosphere by making sure your team has plenty of access to training opportunities in order to keep growing and developing their careers. Being blocked from developing or being missed over for promotion is a key reason why people leave jobs, so make sure you have a transparent, and fair process for giving promotions, and give people options to develop.

 

When new hires join the business, don’t just throw them in at the deep end and expect them to swim. Offer them ample support to learn both the company culture and their job, before they can manage on their own.

 

Be Generous With Praise and Recognition

 

Find a variety of ways to reward employees, other than paying them money. If you know someone has put in a lot of over-time to deliver a project, for example, you could reward them with an extra day off when the project is done in order to rest and recharge. Take a team out to lunch occasionally to say thank for their hard work.

 

Just saying thank you goes a long way too, but it’s surprising how many managers and business owners forget to say it. While they’re doing what you pay them to do, feeling recognised encourages staff to feel more loyal and to work harder. If someone is working hard or offers to step up to a tough task, make sure you thank them.

 

There are lots of ways to say thank you. Say it in person when you offer praise. Give someone who has gone above and beyond a thank you note. In staff meetings, mention and thank those who have delivered the projects you’re talking about. Send company-wide emails about completed projects and thank those who worked on them. Share employee success stories on your social media.

 

If you’re going to thank people in a public way by name, triple-check that you haven’t missed anyone off the list. Forgetting someone will achieve the opposite of what you’re hoping! Thanking people publicly, however, is a good idea. The person you thank feels recognised and proud, and the rest of your employees get a good idea of the sort of thing you’re looking for, and can adjust their own work to deliver that.

 

Give A Career Road Map

 

Development is often cited as a reason to seek a new job. Make developing your staff a priority. If you can help them to grow, they can progress through your company in different roles, meaning they stay with you, and you benefit from their years of experience, knowledge, and training.

 

Many businesses are wary of investing too much time and money into developing an individual, as they worry people will take the training and go elsewhere with it. However, if you don’t let people develop, they will leave anyway.

 

Work with your employees to develop a road map for their career. This starts with your hiring process. You should be finding out where people are hoping to end up. Offer your team regular feedback, in the form of reviews and one-to-ones.

 

Offer training, and the option to attend events like seminars and conferences. They’ll bring back new knowledge and contacts that will benefit you and them. Set them goals to reach along the way, and make sure that you reward people who reach their goals.

 

Make sure your promotion track is transparent and fair. If people feel that they have the ability to grow and develop their career with one company, they are more likely to stay with you, instead of seeking a higher position elsewhere if they feel they aren’t being supported or recognised by you.

 

Employee retention doesn’t have to be difficult. Staff who feel valued, recognised, trusted, and able to develop will stay longer than staff who feel that their managers don’t trust them or value their hard work, or those who feel overlooked for training or promotion. If you can keep your team as happy as possible, you can keep them with your business for a much longer time. This saves you a lot of money on hiring and training new people to replace those who leave, but also makes sure that you have a team around you who is positive, engaged, and loyal to you.

 

It’s also important to take feedback from your team all the time, and a more engaged team will be more willing to do this for you. If you wait until an exit interview to find out why someone wants to leave, then it’s already too late. By taking regular feedback, you can identify and address any problems before they become a big enough problem to cause someone to start applying for other jobs. If you wait til they’re already leaving, there’s probably others not far behind them.

 

For live CPA exam prep and accounting classes, join Conference Room for free. Members will be notified of course dates, times, costs, and how to attend these courses.

 

Get your questions answered to pass the CPA exam, and to learn accounting concepts.

 

Go to Accounting Accidentally for 300+ blog posts and 450+ You Tube videos on accounting and finance:

 

Good luck!

Ken Boyd

Author: Cost Accounting for Dummies, Accounting All-In-One for Dummies, The CPA Exam for Dummies and 1,001 Accounting Questions for Dummies

(email) ken@stltest.net

(website and blog) https://www.accountingaccidentally.com/