Employee Retention Tips Fuel50

Worried About The Great Resignation? Here are Five Tips for Improving Employee Retention

Employee retention is all about hanging on to the right people.

It used to be that a lot of managers thought just paying people more ensured that they would want to stay in your employ.

However, plenty of research has shown that although more money was a factor, it usually wasn’t THE critical element in employee retention. And even if it was sometimes true, that certainly isn’t the case in today’s complex world of remote work and global lockdowns.

In fact, like everything else in our pandemic-disrupted world, employee retention has become much more challenging in the age of The Great Resignation.

We have seen the pendulum swing dramatically from a world where employers had the balance of power as organizations delayered and restructured to a new era where we are experiencing a global talent shortage. The catch cry now is all about employee retention, employee voice, and the need to create a great employee experience to retain talent.

We are finding accelerated demand right now for an agile workforce and for a talent marketplace solution that supports workforce agility, reskilling, and the delivery of an inclusive employee experience for all employees, based on principles of fairness and transparency.

The Harvard Business Review weighed in on this and made the case for what organizations need to keep their best people and regain a greater sense of normalcy as we head into 2022:

The best way to stabilize your business is to stem the tsunami of attrition and increase your retention. In the frantic need to hire more people, the group we often forget to attend to are the folks who stay — those showing up day-in and day-out shouldering the work that needs to get done. Think about what these people — the ones who are here, working for and with you — need now. The short answer is they need to be seen for who they are and what they are contributing. It’s your job as the leader to make sure they’re getting the recognition they deserve.”

This raises a critical question: What must smart companies do to give their workforce the kind of growth experiences they need to be more deeply engaged as we continue to put the pandemic behind us and work towards the better days that lie ahead?

Add value to your workforce to boost employee retention

Fuel50’s research on employee engagement and employee retention found that:

“The key to success in this increasingly competitive environment is to add value to your employees by tailoring work conditions to their individual needs, preferences, and talents.

At the same time, providing meaningful development opportunities allows employees to strengthen their ‘career capital’ and deepen their commitment to their role. This ensures a broad talent base with increased confidence and the ability to add value, as well as allowing you to build an organization where people want to work because they gain valuable skills and experience.”

So, how do you do this? How can you strengthen your workforce and help them to build on their “career capital”?

Here are five important tips to help you improve your employee retention:

1. Focus on internal talent mobility and provide your people with visibility to growth experiences.

An opportunity marketplace solution will allow your workers to have a better long-term vision of their evolving role inside your organization. It also enables you to demonstrate your commitment to career development by improving visibility and access to growth experiences, which the employee benefits from and the company benefits from too.

2. Identify what is going well, what can still be improved, and then turn those insights into action.

If you aren’t sure what your employee survey data says, enlist the help of an expert who can guide and support the process, as well as present high-leverage recommendations to senior leadership. Mine your organization for deep data insights and analyze where there’s room for improvement, then go after it.

3. Encourage a culture of open and continuous communication.

Employees are more satisfied when they can communicate openly with managers about their problems or concerns. When you create a culture of open and continuous communication, by welcoming employee requests, you will find that they not only value the company more, but also their place within it.

4. Ensure your workforce feels valued.

A company is only good as its employees – and that means everyone across the entire organization. Showing people that they matter both boosts morale and gives them purpose. An easy way to help your people feel valued is simply to say, “thank you”, because you can’t say thank you enough.

5. Understand your people’s goals and help to make them happen.

The more you support everyone’s individual goals and aspirations — both their personal goals and those pertaining to their career — the more likely your people are to feel engaged, and you are to retain talent. Offer learning and development opportunities that are aligned to each person’s skills and talents to help provide a positive overall employee experience.

Employee Retention Tips Fuel50

Bottom line? Invest in your people

Although the reasons for voluntary turnover are varied, our Employee Retention Research identified some common threads that contribute to attrition across a variety of sectors:

“In most cases, attrition may be traced to the basic fact that employees leave because they feel that they are investing more in their work than they are receiving.

This can occur due to a mismatch between the values, talents, and working conditions, and, increasingly, a lack of meaningful developmental and advancement opportunities. The combination of these factors determines engagement levels, job satisfaction, and the overall value that employees place upon their job, which ultimately forms the basis of the decision of whether to stay or go.”

According to our new Global Talent Mobility Best Practice Research, organizations with visibility to talent across the business, that possess tools and technology to help build talent pipelines, are more likely to have higher rates of employee retention, higher internal mobility, and higher employee productivity. And best-in-class organizations are investing more in training and career development to achieve these gains.

Ultimately, when you invest in your people and promote coaching, learning and career development, talent mobility, internal recruitment, and a positive overall employee experience, you will find that employee retention becomes a whole lot easier.

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