Ensuring that you have an effective employee retention strategy is critical when it comes to your overall business strategy. Research has shown that the cost of replacing an employee on average can range from one-half to two times their annual salary.
At Quintas, our employees are our priority and we have implemented ways of working to ensure a seamless onboarding and continuing their development throughout their time in our firm. Here are some of the key areas that you can focus on when it comes to ensuring your business has an effective employee retention strategy:
Setting Up for Success
First impressions last, so start as you mean to go on. A successful onboarding process should teach new employees about the business, their new role and your culture. The support you provide from the first few days provides employees with a better understanding of how the business works and what will be expected of them in their new role. This ensures that all queries from new employees are addressed and understood. By having an onboarding checklist, you can ensure that all items are checked off for you and the employee and that you have a consistent onboarding process.
Understanding your Employees
Many employers have moved away from the traditional end-of-year performance appraisal and replaced them with more frequent meetings with team members, focusing on setting development goals to facilitate career progression. By providing continuous feedback to employees both parties are reassured on the rate of progression and any issues that may arise can be addressed in a timely manner.
Engaging with your employees is important to truly listen to and understand any concerns that they may have. One way in which you can do this is by creating an employee engagement survey to measure how invested and satisfied employees are. Giving your employees an outlet to provide honest feedback will flag early indicators of issues and enables employers to address them proactively. By repeating the survey you will have the opportunity to benchmark scores and identify areas where progress has been made.
Development & Progression
A recent study found that 63% of employees cited that a lack of opportunities for advancement was a reason for their resignation. Ensuring that your employees are continuously developing and progressing should be at the forefront of your retention strategy.
At Quintas, we utilise the Buddy System, where an existing employee has been assigned to look out for new team members. This can be as simple as making sure that the new hires have somebody to go for lunch with. Tailor the mentor program to suit your own business, but don’t underestimate how important it can be to ensure that onboarding employees feel connected to the wider team.
Salary and benefits can play a major factor in an employee's decision to stay with or leave a business. As markets are continuously changing, make sure that you keep informed on increases in relation to pay and benefits. To be transparent with employees, set out a policy showing your strategy, this should cover key items such as how often employees get performance reviews and what salary increases should be expected.
Sometimes you may not be able to improve pay and benefits, but non-financial perks such as flexible working hours, remote working and additional annual leave entitlements are also favoured by employees and can lead to increased attraction and retention.
Exit Interviews
Saying goodbye to employees is sometimes inevitable. Exit interviews can provide invaluable insight into employees' perspectives and help you determine where improvement is needed within your business. This in turn benefits the overall retention strategy by identifying areas of weakness that can be addressed ahead of time.
An effective retention strategy will not prevent employees from changing jobs, but it will certainly help to improve retention rates and the average length of service of existing employees.
We would be happy to share further details and assist you in devising and implementing a retention strategy, specific to the needs of your business. For further information please email p.oconnell@quintas.ie
