How You Can Keep Good Talent At Your Company

Attracting top talent to your company and then keeping that talent once you’ve got it, is crucial to your business’s growth and reputation. Employee retention and motivation are interdependent and directly correlated. This means a good employee retention rate will reduce operational costs, allow you to outperform your direct competitors, build morale, and improve your customer service levels.

Hiring and firing is expensive. Very expensive.

If someone leaves your company, you need to consider the opportunity cost and the impact of not having someone in that role for an extended period. It could wipe out a particular client. It could backlog a team, project, or experience. You might now have to pay someone else overtime to compensate for the missing person. This may cause a snowball effect that can cycle into higher workloads, more stress, and sluggish morale.

An active employee retention strategy is perhaps as important as your human resource manager. Why? Two reasons.

1. Customers have more options. When customer service levels are low, your service becomes expendable. We live in an age where anything you may need is four taps away. Unclean sheets at an Airbnb? Booking.com gives you other accommodation options. Are traditional taxis becoming too expensive? Grab an Uber. You get the idea.

2. There are more job boards available. These include new and improved niche job boards tailored to the digital nomad or remote worker. Your workforce won’t stick around if they are miserable, like workers did to 50 years ago. There are many options ripe for exploring.

If your company is known as being old-school and traditional with outlandish expectations and a burn-the-midnight-oil philosophy, many of your employees will gladly trade that in for a remote work arrangement with weekly deadlines.

That’s why employee retention is more critical than ever before, especially during a worldwide pandemic. Luckily for you, we’ve compiled an ultimate guide on reducing high employee turnover, and it starts with hiring the right people.

It’s about positional fit. It’s about culture fit. It’s about team fit. Is this employee a seamless puzzle piece connector that will allow your project to move forward? If the answer is no, move on to a different candidate.

Hire employees who align with all aspects of the business, from its mission to its working arrangement. Ask employees specific behavioral questions throughout the hiring process to see how they react to certain situations. Candidates will often rule themselves out if they don’t fit in with the team professionally, personally, or socially.

Not all employees are made equally. Some people like silence, some like a social environment. Some employees like adjustable standup desks, some like a super comfortable chair.

Allow your employees to pick and choose how and where they would like to work while in the office. Craft different working stations throughout the office, including group tables with projection monitors for collaboration; social areas for snacking and chatting; silent rooms with shut doors and drawable blinds; and customizable individual workstations.

This will allow your employees no excuse for productivity and give them comfort in choice.

You and your business need to make sure you offer compensation that takes care of everyday expenses like food, housing, utilities, and fun. Most people want all of this compensation doubled. At the end of the day, if your salary package is less than your competitors, you’re already a leg down. You’ll have constant turnover, ticked off employees, and record-low morale.

Do market research on wages within your country. Find the median salary for various titles throughout the company and determine what a competitive wage would be.

An attractive salary package is going to be different in New York City than it is in a small town.

Research some competitive benefits packages. Gone are the days when a good salary and a desk are good enough to attract top talent from the professional realm and the new era of university graduates.

Employees want good benefits, and the benefits you offer should be competitive. What are your closest competitors doing? Do it better. Health, retirement, transportation, and education benefits are some of the most common perks of accepting a new job. Want to take it a step further? Introduce personalized benefits. Here the new employee can choose a handful of available perks that make the most sense to them.

Human beings like being praised and rewarded for a job well done. They like to feel like their work is valuable, and making a difference in the company. Employees need encouragement and recognition to continue working their hardest.

When an employee does something right or makes a measurable difference in its favor, show appreciation and happiness. When they finish a gigantic and time-consuming project, and the results are as planned or better, give them a pat on the back or a small reward. It will show your employees that you appreciate them. The overall goal is to create a positive, challenging, and encouraging work environment that bolsters hard work, creativity, competitiveness, and happiness.

People leave companies. No matter how well you do, which processes you put in place, or how high you hike salaries, companies that foster great work will mold their employees to new heights.

If your newly-groomed and model employee has found a better job elsewhere, fight for them. If you can’t win, wish them luck.

Then use your secret weapon — the exit interview. Craft your exit interview to include questions of happiness, pain points, frustrations, things your employee will miss, people they enjoyed, and recommendations for improvement. Take them to heart and continue to improve your employee culture.

This story was written by Nina Stankova and originally appeared on Score.org.