For many business owners, employee retention is an elusive mystery. No matter what kind of tweaks and changes they make to their company culture, their employee turnover never seems to improve. Your staff is the life and blood of your business, so knowing how to keep them happy with your organization is extremely important. Here are some of my best tips for keeping your employees happy at work.
First, try paying more attention to attitude rather than technical skills when it comes to your recruitment drives. Sure, you need a certain level of education and experience to be able to fill some roles effectively. However, if you want to make sure your staff is going to fit into the workplace as closely as possible, it is also very important to consider their attitude. Although technical skills can be important, workers who have a proactive attitude will pick things up and adapt to their position faster than many candidates with more impressive CVs adapt. Of course, you are going to need to attract this kind of talent in the first place to ensure you can hire it. When you are drafting new job advertisements, try to add something that differentiates you from other recruiters. Put more of an emphasis on the personality you are going for than the technical background.
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Next, be a little more generous, and go beyond your standard salary and benefits packages. It does not take some kind of HR genius to see that salary and benefits play a large part in keeping employees at a company. However, your staff is not imprudent, and they will know that you are required to shell out this base level of compensation for their work. You really need to go beyond. If you are selling appropriate products, you might want to offer a considerable discount to anyone who has been working over a certain length of time. You might want to introduce another attractive benefit like company health assessments, or simply buy everyone lunch every few weeks. These kinds of benefits and extras will show your employees that they are appreciated, and give them a higher emotional stake in the brand.
Finally, make sure you are providing all of your employees with decent room for growth. This is perhaps the biggest factor that will make the difference between people staying and leaving. Before you started your business, I am sure you left at least one occupation because you felt like it was limiting your professional growth, or not taking you in the right direction. If your employees are aware of some big, impassable barrier in the way of their dream career, then you cannot expect them to stick around for very long! From the moment you hire someone, you need to provide him or her with ongoing training and opportunities for growth. Get this down, and you will not have to worry about employee retention for a long time!
Take these tips with you, and see what they can do. I hope this advice makes your company more attractive to prospects and more homely for existing employees.