As a business owner, you have a lot of things on your plate. Keeping your employees happy and engaged, meeting deadlines, and creating a high-performing team is all on your list of things to do every day.
First and foremost, keep in mind that people don’t like to be bossed around; micromanagement is a No-No.
To get employees to want to work for you, you need to show them that they can trust you to do what’s in their best interest and that you come from a place that genuinely cares about them and their development.
Today, job-hopping has become the rave of the moment, and millennials would instead move from one place of employment to the other in a bit to seek better pay, better job security, or sometimes, even a more important-sounding job title.
Studies carried out by Forrester Research indicates that the average person would hold up to 12-15 jobs before the end of their careers.
About half of the employees in a typical business are actively searching for other jobs.
With statistics as dire as that, it is not surprising that many companies lose a third of their workers yearly.
According to research by the Centre for American Progress, employee replacements cost employers as much as 20% of the salary of an average employee.
The knowledge of this trend has pushed several companies to invest heavily in researching what leads to employees leaving their employment faster than expected.
One such program is in what has come to be called exit interviews – interviews conducted by HR with a staff member who is leaving a company to find out why they are going.
The thinking here is that if the business can understand the motive for the employee leaving, the management would strategically place the company to mitigate untimely staff exits.
While businesses can learn from these exit interviews, it appears to me that they are reactionary – amounting to locking the barn after the horses are gone.
True, there is nothing that employers can do to prevent staff exits, especially among the younger generation. Families can move, goals can change, and better opportunities may beckon.
However, it is not all gloomy as there are strategies that you can employ to keep most of your best people with you.
Let us examine five of them.
1. Infuse Meaning into What Your Employees Do At Your Business
It begins with the mission – Employees who see meaning in their work are the most loyal to their employers. In the inverse, employees will not be committed to their work if it doesn’t seem to offer the expected value.
Infuse meaning into what you do at your business. When employees cannot see how their involvement adds sense to your work, they will find it challenging to maintain levels of enthusiasm and commitment to the job at hand.
The idea that one is working towards a compelling vision can make your employees wake up with a whistle to their lips and walk with a bounce on their feet.
What is the vision that you have for the business? Can you share the image? Is it contagious?
A related factor here is in the genuineness of the employers. When leaders in an organization take actions congruent with their utterances, employees have more trust in them and are more likely to take ownership of the organization’s vision.
Going from that, when all in the organization, including leadership, have a thorough understanding of the organization’s core values and not just internalize it but take ownership of it, the employee stickiness factor goes up through the roof.
Gallup Research carried out a study where they found that about 83% of employees considered living a life of purpose and working for an organization that aligned with their mission and values as “very important”.
That same study found out that about 77% of employees who had a clear understanding of what their companies stood for indicated willingness to stay with their employer for at least a year.
2. Organizational Culture and Employee Performance
The culture of your organization has to be discernable to your team and reinforced in the communication pattern, actions, and behaviour of all, starting from the top management.
The dominant culture in organisations depends on:
- The environment in which the company operates
- The organisation’s objectives
- The belief system of the employees
- The company’s management style
A crucial part of company culture is reflected in communication between leadership and employees and among employees. Having a work culture where open dialogue is both expected and encouraged will be a key strategy in both your ability to attract and retain top-notch talent in your startup.
Managers should set a good example of leadership by listening, offering constructive feedback, and accepting practical suggestions from employees.
A part of your culture that may have a lot to do with employee retention is work-life balance. While your team may be agile and working at full throttle, there is an ever-present danger of burnout as a result.
Yes, a great work ethic is commendable. But it is also essential that managers ensure that their staff is getting enough rest and living an entire and meaningful life outside work.
Of course, you may have urgent deadlines to meet from time to time, which will mean that you work long hours and even late nights. That is expected in any business, most notably in one just starting. However, make sure that you offer compensation for the imposition into the personal time of your staff by giving them a day off or a late resumption.
Such compensations will signal your staff that you respect their time and value the sacrifice that they put into making the company a success.
Additionally, if telecommuting or flexible hours is practical for your business, you may want to consider it as it has a marked influence on employee retention.
3. Effective onboarding
When a new member of staff joins your team, you should set them up for success. Your onboarding process has a lot to do with how long a new hire eventually stays with your organization. Sadly, many organizations spend little time helping new hires fit in, which reportedly accounts for why up to 20% of new hires leave their jobs within the first 45 days of employment.
Active organizations take the onboarding of new hires seriously and ensure that they know how to carry out the job, fit into the company culture, and fit in socially and thrive in their unique setting.
This onboarding process ensures that new hires feel less like a fish out of water in their first months. Do they know how to get an ID, where to sort out insurance and health benefits, where to park if they own a car, what key acronyms are used as everyday words in your team?
It is also critical that you set up early wins for your new hire by giving them early tasks that can easily be completed and build up momentum from there. Those early wins improve their confidence in the job and their ability to deliver, which has a lot to do with new hire retention.
It is also crucial that you build a sense of community and ensure that new hires find their way and blend into the company and its culture.
4. Offer a competitive compensation plan.
Employees reasonably expect that they should be rewarded as much as they could make in a similar position at one of your competitors. If their pay is lower than the top of the industry, seek ways to make up for it by offering more perks. Generally, employees may feel undervalued when they have to receive less pay than they should.
It is also a given that employees expect to receive similar compensation to what their colleagues are earning, irrespective of whether they are poor at negotiating. In contrast, their colleagues are salary negotiating rock stars.
Some employers have taboo subjects, which include how much you are earning on the job. Openness about salary structure and benefits packages can make all those on your workforce have a clear understanding of their prospect at your business and how progression will affect their compensation.
Additional suggestions that can complement your compensation plan include offering a health benefit and pension package. You might also want to consider the end of year bonuses, which could be a percentage of profit shared among your staff.
Many employees have reported that additional perks have influenced their decision to stay on at a job, beyond their principal compensation amount.
5. Allow employees to take the initiative.
How well do you delegate, as opposed to micro-manage? When managers are willing to relinquish control to employees so that they can get the work done, it results in more confidence and retention.
Research has shown a 31% lower employee turnover rate in companies that allow staff to take more initiative in getting the work done as opposed to merely following instructions.
A key to earning loyalty from employees is showing them that you trust them to carry out their job diligently. If you are hovering over their shoulders, they will not grow into their space. While your desire to get things right might make you feel that it is a great idea to micromanage your team, it may just end up creating an atmosphere lacking in trust.
A better approach would be to help employees set reasonable goals, provide the resources and skills needed to get their job done and provide constructive feedback intermittently during and after the task to improve overall performance.
This atmosphere of initiative-taking should be ingrained into the culture of your organization and be considered as the default. Some organizations promote innovation and initiative-taking by incentivizing the generation of new ideas.
6. Maintain neutrality
Employees need to know that they can expect fairness from the management of their organization. One of the hallmarks of workplace fairness is neutrality. When employees come to you to complain about the actions of others, don’t be quick to take sides and pass judgments, neither should you try to belittle the concerns that have been expressed.
A sustainable approach is to respectfully listen to the concern and promise to check with the employee involved. Make sure you follow through on their fears and take firm steps to resolve differences.
While employees must know that you run an open-door policy and approach you with whatever concerns they may have, you must remain the boss by retaining objectivity in how you handle conflicts with team members.
When you always act in a manner that puts employees at ease when there is conflict instead of playing favourites, this will result in higher employee retention.
7. Invest in employee development
When employees have a sense of advancement in their job, it improves their feelings of job satisfaction as well as their prospect of staying long on the job. Your best employees will always seek ways to grow, and if working for you means that they become too busy to develop their skills and self professionally, chances are that they will leave you and move to a more promising opportunity.
Smart employers pay for employees to attend training, workshops, conferences, and similar industry events or even offer refunds for their enrollment in career advancement training.
Managers can try to get familiar with the short and long-term goals of employees so as to find out how they can help their team members reach those goals.
Familiarization with the goals of employees can help a manager know who to a partner who with on projects, so a mentorship relationship can be fostered.
8. Maintain a zero jerk policy
Many employees would report that they have left a job in the past because of a hostile work environment.
A surprising report from a study conducted by a Canadian university however shows that colleagues who observe abuse are even more likely to quit in protest than those who directly suffer the abuse.
The Workplace Bullying Institute defines Workplace Bullying as “repeated mistreatment: sabotage by others that prevents work from getting done, verbal abuse, threatening conduct, intimidation, and humiliation”.
If you have a staff member who loves being a jerk and getting on the nerves of colleagues, you can bet on one thing – it will eventually affect employee morale and force some employees to move on in a bid to maintain their peace of mind.
When you notice that an employee is a bully, whether this is perpetrated frontally or subtly, bring out your organizational policy on bullying and make sure that the staff involved sees what the relevant sections say. If they refuse to change their behavior, it is better to let them go than to disrupt the whole team.
Applying these suggestions to your new business will help you hire right and keep the new hires satisfied for the long term.
