After a long, vigorous hiring process, you’ve finally hired a promising employee. They’re intelligent, ambitious, they work well autonomously, they’ve had proven success in your industry, they come highly recommended by top companies, they’re upbeat, and they’re a good match with your company culture. Really, they’re everything you’ve ever wanted in an employee. But finding this super star employee is the first hurdle. How do you ensure they stick around?
The success of your company is contingent upon your ability to answer this question. High employee turnover costs business owners a lot in time, productivity and money. And when your employees are happy, they emit happiness in all their endeavors, which leads to happy customers, which then leads to better company performance. Offering a higher paying salary or attractive raises can help with employee retention, but often times, it’s not enough. There are many other things besides money that motivate employees to stick around.
Here are our top 12 employee retention tips to help you keep your new super star employee sticking around:
1. Give them permission to be themselves! Everyone puts their best face on when first starting a new role. It’s understandable and expected however by verbally saying to a new team member “it’s ok to be overwhelmed or it’s ok to ask a lot of questions”, you set a tone that the company is really here to help you succeed however you need to be open to ask for help.
2. Know your new-hires. Find out what working style suits them best and what their passions are. You can do this by casually asking them questions, or you can put together a questionnaire that asks personality based questions. You can even go as far as having them take a personality test. Understanding their personality will help guide your management approach and help you accommodate them better in their work environment.
3. Offer the option to telecommute. Offering the option to telecommute once in awhile can be very enticing to employees, especially ones with families who need to be home at certain times.
4. Do monthly check-ins. Checking in with employees each month to see what’s motivating them and what’s holding them back can be a good way to field any potential problems.
5. Offer a competitive benefits package. Not only do you want to offer better benefits than other companies in your industry, you want to go beyond health insurance by offering things like stock options or special discounts.
6. Leave room for autonomy and innovation. Challenging your employees by leaving room for growth and creativity in projects can be very empowering and help them to thrive.
7. Give employees a sense of ownership. Encouraging feedback on business decisions can make for more engaged employees. You can even go as far as putting business decisions up to a company vote.
8. Offer contests and special incentives. A little competition can be very motivating, and if done effectively, it can make achieving goals a lot more fun. Special incentives for reaching certain goals like being taken out to lunch by the CEO of the company or getting an extra paid vacation day are also fantastic ways to foster employee loyalty.
9. Share your mission and guiding principles. The first part of this is to create a mission and guiding principles that are easy to follow, positive and inspiring. The second is to make sure these written materials are displayed prominently and discussed often. This helps keep employees truly connected with your company.
10. Conduct stay and exit interviews. Conducting regular exit interviews is a good way to find out if there’s something you did to repel the employee. Holding interviews with long-term employees to find out why they’ve stuck with you will help you figure out what you’re doing that’s working.
11. Promote from within as much as possible. Constantly hiring people from other companies rather than promoting your employees can send a bad message. Letting employees know that you reward those that stick with you helps encourage loyalty.
12. Offer ample training and development. Training is expensive and time-consuming, but you want your employees to be set up for success, right? Helping them grow and showing you’re vested in that growth will help them feel good about the job they’re doing.
Have you used any of these employee retention tactics? How did they work out for your company? Please comment below.