It’s the great resignation, and top talent recognizes their value as well as their options.
When you lose employees, you lose money, and no one goes into business to lose money. If you’re tired of spending the time and the money to train new employees, only to watch them walk out the door after a few months, it’s time to look at your employee retention strategies.
Of course, one of the best ways to retain employees is to make sure you’re hiring the right people, which we talked about in the last blog post. Once you’re certain you’re hiring the right people, here’s what you can do to hold onto them.
Train Them Right
An untrained (or poorly trained) employee is more likely to be a dissatisfied employee. They’ll make more mistakes than a properly trained employee, which will lead them to think they’re not right for the job, and so they’ll start looking for another one.
To avoid that outcome, you need to invest the time and resources into training your employees as soon as they start working for you. Make sure you thoroughly cover all the materials with them and give them plenty of opportunities to ask questions so they can start work with a good understanding of what’s expected of them. If you have a large enough team, assigning a mentor (who is willing to take this on), will help them feel supported when their manager is not available.
Keep in mind that training doesn’t have an end date. A good training program should extend past the employee’s start date, not only to ensure they understand their responsibilities and deliverables, but also how their position affects the company. Remember everyone is in sales when they are representing your brand.
Promote Fulfillment
While a good salary can certainly help you retain employees, if that’s all you have to offer, then you can always be outbid by someone else. The days of people working for the same company for decades are long gone. Now people need a reason to stick around, so if you want your employees to stay with you for the long haul, you must give them a reason to do so.
If your team finds their roles fulfilling, they’ll be much less likely to leave than if they’re simply clocking in and working just hard enough not to be fired.
In some cases, this goes back to making sure you’re hiring the right people for the right roles. Far too often, I encounter managers who hire people they can “relate to” without considering the team dynamic That said, not every job is going to be fulfilling. Papers need to get filed and calendars need to get organized, and few people are going to find that kind of work fulfilling. But by getting creative with the ways to make work more fulfilling, you can retain your high performers longer. Provide your teams with incentives to get involved in community service projects to increase their sense of fulfillment, which in turn will increase the likelihood they’ll keep working for you.
Provide a Supportive Work Environment
A mentorship program is a great way to provide support and opportunities for your employees to grow. And it has the added benefit of helping your employees at all levels of the company feel fulfilled because mentors get to share their knowledge and feel like they’re making a difference, while mentees get the benefit of that knowledge, as well as the opportunities for growth that come with it. Opportunities for growth (both personally and professionally) are both big reasons for employees to stay with a company, so a mentorship program can also provide that benefit to your employees.
Finally, employees are more likely to stay with a company when they feel connected to their coworkers, and few things are going to make them feel connected to a place like having a mentor/mentee who also works there.
Hire Smart People
No one likes to be micromanaged, and let’s face it, you have better things to do than micromanage your employees. If you hired the right people, you shouldn’t need to be leaning over their shoulders all the time making sure they’re doing everything right, or, worse yet, trying to do their job for them.
When you trust your employees and let them take initiative occasionally, they’ll be more likely to find the job both fun and fulfilling, which will increase the likelihood they’ll continue working with you. They’ll also be more likely to come up with new and innovative ways of doing things, which could benefit your company in the long run.
Whether you’re struggling to attract or retain top talent or both, I can help. All you need to do is schedule a time to chat so we can have a conversation.