Although it’s common for employees to come and go, the trends in employees leaving the company may point to more severe concerns. To determine what causes employees to leave, you’ll need tools to get feedback, assess information, and plan action based on employee input. Doing this as a periodic practice will help you retain your employees and make them stay in the company for a more extended period. A good retention strategy will probably help in retaining the best talent for your company. What is Employee Retention Strategy?
Retention strategy refers to certain' plans made by the company to:
Prevent attrition, and Retain employees
The primary goal of the Human Resource strategy is to meet the manpower plan agreed with the business.
The Organization strives to meet Employees' expectations without losing sight of the company’s goals to ensure maximum return on investment. Why do employees leave a company?
Understanding the root cause is crucial to creating the best retention strategies for employees. Let’s look at some of the reasons why employees leave a company:
- Monetary needs and aspirations
- Perks and benefits
- Workload and Support
- Career and Learning Opportunities
- Recognition
- Job Fitment
- Company Outlook and Culture
- More compelling job opportunities
How does an organization analyze its employee experience? Great Employee Experience is the most effective and proactive retention strategy
To improve the employee experience at your organization, the leadership needs to analyze the employee well-being, engagement and networking quotient at the workplace. These 3 core pillars if managed well will propel employee productivity.
Employee Engagement: Every organization has actively engaged, moderately engaged, disengaged and cynical employees. However, organizations that have a very high percentage of actively engaged employees benefit from high employee ownership and accountability. Employee engagement can be seen as 3 parts - satisfaction, loyalty and advocacy. The organization has to periodically analyze which is the focus area. Sometimes an organization may have high employee satisfaction but low loyalty. Similarly, It may be a case where there is low satisfaction but high loyalty and low advocacy. 6 monthly analysis should be done to understand which is the area that needs focus and where is the problem that needs to be addressed. However, many organizations take very long to find the root cause of the issue and in the process, it may suffer damage.
Employee Well-being: Organizations focus on the well-being of their employees. However, their focus is often skewed towards physical and psychological well-being. They conduct regular fire drills, have an inhouse counselor for employees to engage with, conduct yoga classes and health checkups etc. So, what are they missing? Many companies miss giving adequate attention towards social, sexual and professional wellbeing. Are employees subjected to bullying or harassment and made to do unethical or unprofessional tasks etc.? A holistic analysis covering all the 5 components empowers the organization with information that scores low and needs to be acted upon.
Employee Networking: The workplace is made of employees who are connected with other employees directly or indirectly. These connections whether of formal or informal nature enable the smooth functioning of the workplace. While connections form networks, each connection brings a unique strength to the network. Some people are passive while few others are active in the network at different time phases. Similarly, networks help its members or connections and the members collectively give strength to the network. Some networks are dynamic while some are more connective. Active networks which are high on collaboration, diversity and connective quotient present more opportunities to its members. Such workplaces are more open and employees can seek guidance or information with ease. They are able to get work done even outside the organization due to the connective potential of the workplace. Those workplaces that strategically facilitate networking with the group benefit on many counts such as higher efficiency and productivity.
The modules of Winzard Winning Workplaces focus on delivering the above information, and facilitate action planning and decisions to make the employee experience superior. While it may be tempting to start working on new retention initiatives right away, being too hasty can waste time, money, and effort, especially if you don’t know precisely what issues are problematic for your workforce.
Before you start crafting retention strategies like pay revisions and awards for employees, you’ll need in-depth quantitative and qualitative research to understand your organization’s underlying issues. Why does employee retention matter?
Businesses must prioritize proactive employee retention since losing top talent comes at a high cost. And often it may be too late and difficult to retain reactively. According to a study, the cost of recruiting and training to replace a manager earning $40,000 per year is between $20,000 and $30,000. The loss of interview time, information, productivity, or cultural influence is not considered. Additionally, low retention rates affect performance, productivity, and motivation. Before leaving a job, staff members could start working less as a team, completing the bare minimum and failing to meet long-term deadlines. It is believed that over 50% of the causes of employee departures are avoidable.