Companies are going through unprecedented employee turnover right now. Employers are looking to do everything they can to help reduce the number of employees leaving their organization.
Lowering employee turnover takes time, but there are things that you can implement today to help improve your retention.
1. Hire the right people
If you want to reduce turnover, you have to realize that turnover risk increases the second you hire the wrong person. You will make better hires by using a pre-hiring assessment. Hiring assessments or hiring personality tests that will tell you how likely someone is to succeed in the role. Hiring assessments are is more foolproof than an interview. In an interview skilled candidates represent themselves in the best light possible. Hiring assessments measure who a person is on the inside and will tell you how their brain works.
2. Recognize and reward employees
Your employees need recognition and appreciation and you can encourage this behavior by providing thoughtful human resource training of each people manager. Recognition and rewards programs don’t have to be costly, but they do need to be consistent and used throughout the organization. The bottom line is that any minimal cost in recognition programs will be recouped by increasing your retention and reducing employee turnover.
3. Keep up with the market
If your company isn’t doing annual raises formally, you might end up doing it accidentally. If your salaries aren’t keeping up with the market, people will leave and you will have to pay more to backfill the same role. You are likely paying the costs of keeping up with the market whether you’re doing it intentionally or not. Conduct periodic reviews of how your positions are graded and compensated as compared to the market and establish a process of doing annual salary increases for folks who meet or exceed expectations. Even if the increases are only 2%-4% it will help you keep pace with the economy and reduce turnover.
4. Create career paths
Employees need to know that they have a future with the company. If there aren’t internal promotion pathways they will leave. Employees need to see leadership roles get filled from within and see opportunities for themselves or their peers to advance in their careers. Reduce employee turnover and create these pathways by establishing company policies supporting this objective. Basically these policies should prioritize internal candidates and posts positions internally before opening them up to outside applicants. You can help your employees stay motivated and engaged by ensuring that there is a clear internal career pathway set up. Once established, you should communicate what that pathway is and help them know how to navigate it.
5. Have a healthy workplace
People need balance between their lives and their workplaces and they need a workplace culture that is healthy and positive. You can reduce turnover by making a healthy work environment, and you will increase productivity at the same time. Healthy workplaces make employees feel mentally and physically safe.
