Employee Retention Strategies
An African proverb says, “If you want to go fast, go alone if you want to go far, go together”. A company starts with a vision of one person then people come along. A start-up can result from one person’s vision but if it has become a successful business, then there are many people who shared the same dream and worked as a team that carried this caravan to new achievements.
Employees are the backbone of every start-up. They come along, get trained, share the company’s vision and work dedicatedly every day for its success. They invest time and effort, the company invests time, efforts and money to prepare them and shape their talent for the work.
It is a long process and requires lots of effort and dedication from both parties. However, once this process is completed your employees become an asset for the company and retaining them costs a lot less as compared to the efforts and money spent on hiring and training them for the work.
Employee Retention starts with hiring
We are living in a world where the unemployment rate is always high, but that doesn’t mean the world is overflowed with talent. The world has a shortage of right talent and if your HR couldn’t bring the right person on-board your training team will spend more time to prepare them for work. Hiring the right talent is crucial. Your hiring person should understand your requirements and expectations themselves first, before interviewing someone else.
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Have a brief discussion with your hiring manager before they hire candidates. They should have a clear idea about the work’s demands such as experience, values, degree, and skill-set. It is also mandatory to always hire a full-time employee for the work. It is true that you have more control over an employee but if responsibilities and work are limited hiring a freelancer would be a wise decision.
Provide benefits
In today’s competitive world it is not very difficult to find a job for a person with talent. Sooner or later they find a job with a higher salary in the industry that’s why just a monthly salary won’t be able to hold your employee with the organization for long. Providing benefits not only binds them with the company but also encourage them to take part in the organization’s wellness and growth.
Financial motivating factors such as monthly rewards, bonus, insurance, allowances, EPF, ESI, promotions, etc. are necessary and sometimes more motivating than salary. Around 89% of corporations use money incentives to retain their workers. Apart from these, proving benefits for their family builds a healthy psychological bond between the organization and the employees, and once you start caring for their life and wellness, their undivided dedication towards work is all yours.
Create a healthy environment for work
Are your employees psychologically well to work at the company? Do they look motivated when they come or they look happier when they leave? Monitor the environment of each and every team from time to time. Conduct surveys if required and take action on feedback quickly.
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It is said that an employee doesn’t leave the company they leave the boss. Monitoring team leaders and their behavior towards their fellow mates is as important as monitoring the team’s profit graph. A mentally exhausted and unhappy employee can never give dedication to your work requires. Understand their needs and wants; create a department dedicated to employees’ wellness at the workplace if possible.
Appreciate, motivate and promote
We assume an employee has only a few standard expectations from an organization such as money and leaves whenever they want and yearly growth if possible but they require much more than that. Everywhere in the world, we have a corporate culture where employees are hired, trained then left to work as an emotionless machine and even at some places it is worse than that.
One of the reasons for this situation is that we think employees need companies not the other way round but in reality, both are the compliments to each other. Employees are not either respected not motivated, forget about the promotion. When start-ups start practicing the act that they are hiring someone to work with the company, not for the company, this problem will come to an end, eventually. Encourage a culture where both are entitled to listen to each other and learn and do not forget to promote when they earn.
Respect diversity
Every person has his own pace to learn and perform. Some are slow but steady, and some might prove to be a fast-paced runner. Some take a lot of time still lack in delivering quantity but outrun everyone in quality work, however, there are few who can deliver work in bulk but with compromised quality.
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It is true that every person gets the same training, equal knowledge transfer and live practice session, but you can’t expect the same outcome from everyone. Not everybody is a leader that doesn’t mean those who are not are worthless. There would be never-ending chaos in the organization if everyone becomes a leader. Encourage curiosity and answer their questions. Allow them to invest their time in generating ideas. Everyone is talented in their own way. As soon as you find out and divert the energy the better it would be. Respect this diversity and have faith in your decision.
Monitor performance
Do you know how much time does it take to complete a task your employees are given? It seems impossible to know at a later stage, but in early start-up days, you need to monitor the time a person takes to complete a given task. If it is more than expected time, there should be a reason behind that and you should be aware.
Don’t pressurize them to exhaust themselves to complete a daily task but it is also important that they are utilizing their time as they are supposed to. Take note that when we are talking about retaining an employee, we are talking about retaining a good employee. An Employee who is not reducing your work burden becomes a dead weight you don’t want to carry.
Show them respect and importance even when they leave
It is practiced everywhere in corporate culture to have distant and careless behavior towards the person who is leaving your organization. You should respect a person who contributed towards the growth of your company enough regardless of their tenure. Your ex-employee is a carrier of the reputation of your company and brand and how you treated him/her has the potential to build or destroy your image in the market.
