Employee retention: 7 Ways To Retain Your Talent in 2020
The new year is traditionally a time where we re-evaluate our lives (and bank balances) for the twelve months ahead, which makes it a common time for employees to start considering switching jobs. This new ambition is all well and good, unless of course, you’re the manager wanting to retain that talent and keep staff turnover to a minimum.
With this in mind, here are 7 top tips to retain your employee retention in 2020.
Profiling
With the use of a personal assessment tool such as DiSC, you can gain detailed insight into the personality and behaviour of both you and your employees. This can help you to understand how best to work with individuals, providing a common language and allowing you to adapt your behaviours for better work relationships.
Innovative benefits
It would be easy for us to tell you to give your employees an attractive pay packet to encourage them to stay – but that would be too obvious. Often, however, all it takes is some innovative thinking around what else would benefit your employees; flexible working hours? Extra holiday? Free breakfast? Conduct a survey within your company to find out what would make employees stay for the following year.
Team building exercises
Traditional team building exercises can be out of touch with the modern workplace. For many, these can feel forced, patronising and particularly awkward. Ditch the icebreakers and corporate mixers and opt for a more relaxed activity. Up the ante with an escape room challenge or introduce board games to your Friday afternoon social. In fact, a study has found that over 50% of people play board games to connect with friends. So, not only will a casual game of Pictionary improve cognitive ability, stress levels and morale, but it’s also the perfect chance for colleagues to bond!
Training and development
Though you’re paying your employee to be there, they’re also dedicating time in their life to you. If they’re not flourishing in their professional life, then chances are, they’ll look elsewhere. There are many ways you can train and develop your staff, from one-to-one sessions, mentorship or the likes of e-learning sites, workshops and training courses. Training really is a win-win: you’re getting the best out of your employee, and they’re getting the best out of themselves.
Transparency
Nobody wants to be at a company that is founded on miscommunication and distrust. Often, when this is the case, people feel disillusioned with the company’s values and start to resent what it stands for. Instead, create a company culture that works with clear understanding, from job roles to responsibilities and performance. It pays to remember that protecting your employees from the realities of the business tends to do more harm than good.
Recognise accomplishment
Recognising talent can be as simple as a “thank you” email, to the “gold standard” rewards of pay rises and promotions. However, often, this recognition can be too little, too late. Instead of offering compensation as a last ditch attempt to keep an employee to stay, give praise and rewards while they’re there to build a mutual appreciation that lasts.
Conduct exit interviews
Exit interviews will give you insight into what employees did and did not like about your company, helping you to put new practices into place for the future. These interviews can bring issues to your attention that you may otherwise have not known about – from poor management to workplace bullying or employee conflict. It’s not always bad, though; you might discover some aspects that people loved, so you know what to keep doing in the future.
This guest post was authored by Hannah Waters
Hannah is a freelance writer covering topics related to technology and society. She has worked extensively with many leading lights and advocates in the small business world, and has a particular interest in how the technological revolution can be used to improve all of our lives. She is based in London.
