Employee Retention | How to handle employee retention in 2021? | Best practices, tips and insights!

Struggling to retain your best resources? If so, there are systemic reasons why employee retention is a challenging task. Learn tips and tricks to tackle it. Read on!

Employee retention

Employee retention indicates the various policies and strategies that enable the retention of a company’s employee for a longer duration of time. When employees leave their job, companies are in a dilemma to fulfill the position and to continue the business as usual. Hence organizations dedicate a considerable amount of time and money to formulate employee retention strategies.

“How to keep employee in your organization for long?”

Offering lucrative salaries, better work-life balance, comfortable work ambiance, and potential growth opportunities are some of the key retention strategies. Besides companies must dedicate special attention to dissatisfaction expressed by employees and ensure acceptable resolution to enable retention in the workplace and resolve retention issues.

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What is employee retention?

While answering, “What is employee retention?”; in simpler terms, employee retention can be defined as the adoption of a retention plan to motivate and inspire employees to continue in the organization.

Reducing isolation, fostering learning and growth, and recognizing contribution must be the key focus areas for job retention skills and in employee retention strategy; to be discussed extensively in this employee retention article.

Why retaining employees is a necessity?

Before we move on to find out how to retain good employees, let us first try to understand the necessity of retaining employees. Here are the 3 key reasons why employee retention is of utmost importance,

1. Recruitment is a time-consuming and costly process to shortlist potential candidates, conduct interviews, and induct them into the organization. Once an employee leaves, the company again has to invest effort and money in filling the vacancy; a hurdle in the retention employees programs
2. Employees leaving an organization may join its competitors posing a serious risk to business continuity and information leakage.
3. Employees working for the long term are conversant with the company’s ways of working, norms, and policies than a new joiner.

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Benefits of having a good employee retention management

Retention management has several benefits, the key among them are,

1. Employee retention ensures smooth continual of business operations without hurdles of replacing people while executing a critical customer assignment or program
2. Retained employees display much higher dedication and commitment compared to the new employees joining the organization
3. Creative and talented employees turn out to be great leaders and managers in a company; whose contribution eventually leads to greater customer satisfaction and hence following a robust retention strategy is important

Psychology of employee retention

Employee retention policies carry more meaning to them beyond retaining employees in an organization. Retention planning showers respect to an employee’s well-being over and above the professional life. Frequent recognition of a person’s contribution through giveaways, and pay rise aid in talent retention.

The employees gain trust and confidence in leadership through staff retention strategies. Remote employees specifically can overcome the feeling of isolation through employee retention policies. They can look up to the company to achieve their goals in professional lives and go for more and more growth in their future career.

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Challenges faced in staff retention

Staff retention is a worry for the majority of organizations. There are many contributing factors to employee retention dilemmas. We will discuss the top 3 retention problems which may eventually guide you on how to keep employees in your organization.

1. There are a plethora of job opportunities in the market with high-paying salaries. Companies are under pressure to maintain the balance between expenditures and the retention program.
2. The demands from employees are sometimes unrealistic about roles, duties, facilities, job timing, location, etc. Companies struggle to fulfill them in employee retention techniques
3. Job rotation is normally not considered seriously in organizations. It leads to monotony even though you offer higher roles and compensation packages. Hence its needs due focus on an employee retention program.

Metrics of a good employee retention programme

If you want to access the success of your employee retention programme, here are the key metrics to measure,

1. Retention Rate – Aids in evaluating the number of employees staying within a team or department within a given time frame, as part of your retained employment techniques
2. Turnover Rate – Judges how many employees are leaving your team or department within a time duration. Helps in analyzing the health of your team in your retain employee programs.
3. Retention rate of high performers – A very crucial metrics to measure in your retention programs. High performers stimulate the work environment in the right direction
4. New employee satisfaction rate – Captured through surveys, interviews and feedbacks after few months of recruitment. If the rate is low, you need to figure out the gaps to improve employee retention methods.

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Best employee retention strategies

Wondering how to increase retention? Here are the best in class employee retention strategies for your guidance to increase retention of an employee. The recommendation is to draft an employee retention strategies ppt to capture all the thoughts along with the retention plan examples,

1. The salary, benefits, and perks provided to the employees along with flexible work hours are some of the best retention strategies to be deployed in a company.
2. Recruiting the right person at the right role is the employee strategy a company must adopt as part of the employee retention mechanism
3. One of the effective employee retention strategies is to provide leaders to your employees and not someone to boss over.

Top 10 ways on how to retain employees?

We will now focus on how to retain employees; the ways and best practices for improving employee retention rates. While designing ways to retain employees, it is recommended to follow the two-factor theory of Herzberg. The two factors one must focus on are Hygiene factor and Motivators.

First step to retain employee is hiring

Studies reveal 80% of employee turnover occurs due to wrong hiring decisions. To retain employee, the stepping stone is to select the right person. Ensure a well-defined interview evaluation process for recruitment; thus compensating your employee retention plans and programs.

It is suggested to question practical situations rather than theoretical queries to judge the experience level of the candidates. This is one of the employee retention best practices companies must follow as part of their recruitment and retention planning and policies.

Retain employment through continual learning programs

Providing opportunities for increasing the competency level of the employees through trainings and continual learning programs is one of the vital ways to retain employment. Ensure you look for both internal and external learning courses and programs as part of your employee retention plan. Achieving growth in a career is the ambition of many employees.

Hence their interest will be to upskill or cross-skill their knowledge. If the company can provide all the requisite knowledge bank and expert guidance, then you can rest assured to increase your workforce retention rate. Besides, providing certifications free of cost can be one of the good ways to ensure employee retention.

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Incentives and perks for retained employees

Retained employees are the pillars of a company’s success, especially those who are associated for a considerable time and are high-performers. Therefore retention incentives for employees along with the added benefits and perks must be as per the trending retention best practices and industry standards.

An employee retention policy must constantly evaluate the compensation packages provided to the company’s employees. As part of employee retention practices, surveys can be conducted to collect information on employee satisfaction for the incentives provided. Any dissatisfaction to be handled urgently as part of the employee retention techniques.

Transparency in communication for retention of employee

A company’s top leadership and management play a vital role in the retention of employee. Sharing the company’s vision, mission and objectives frequently must occupy a crucial part in employee retention norms.

You need to ensure employees can raise their concerns and there are listening ears for providing adequate resolutions. There must not be any hidden facts while communicating with the employees. This is one of the prominent retention initiatives adopted by companies nowadays encouraging interactions between the CXOs and the employees.

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Robust and evolving retention planning

Retention planning must be provided due importance if you are seriously wondering how to retain employees in an organization. What is a retention plan or what is the retention plan definition? Employee retention starts with hiring and evolves through robust planning.

Create an employee retention plan template for the organization as a whole as well as for the different departments. Circulate the employee retention plan sample following your HR retention policies and procedures.

Ensure to review the recruitment and retention plan at pre-defined intervals and introduce improvisations. Refer to an employee retention plan example of renowned companies. Besides, ensure to draft a separate key employee retention plan especially for your high performers.

Devise a state of the art employee retention strategy

One of the answers to your question on, “how to increase employee retention?” is to devise a state-of-the-art employee retention strategy. Intertwine the recruiting and retention strategies for synergies. Bake in the benefits of excelling both in professional and extra-curricular activities.

Some of the employee retention ideas can be offering corporate gifts, offering holiday vouchers, performance awards and many more. Devise the retention strategies for employees to assist in maintaining steady work and life balance. Improve retention rate by providing a mentor for support and guidance. Embed in the concept of collaboration for better coordination and well-being as part of employee retention culture.

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Employee welfare programs aid in the retention of employees

One of the crucial success factors in the retention of employees is health insurance benefits. As part of employee recruitment and retention norms, tie-up with a renowned medical insurance company to provide health insurance benefits to your employees. The medical claim processes must be hassle-free.

“Health is Wealth”. Medical expenses are sometimes high and hence employees seek insurance. Better the benefits, greater is your chance to achieve a high retention employee rate. Conduct fitness programs, medical awareness programs, sports competitions and guided health plans for improving retention levels.

Feedback and surveys related to the retention plan

The efficiency of a retention plan depends on its success in deploying employee retention methodologies in the organization. There are various ways to measure the effectiveness of retention plans. Collecting feedback and conducting surveys on the retention plans for employees; are some of the prominent and key ways of measurement.

Accordingly, the retention plan for employees can be re-visited, faults rectified and improvisations introduced. Managing employee retention is an art that starts at the planning stage. It is one of the important employee retention tools that must be properly leveraged for achieving the appropriate results.

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High performing talent retention

High performers are an asset to a company; the pillars of success for organizations. Hence talent retention must be provided due attention to retain good employees. Both recruitment and retention strategies are vital for harnessing the right skill in the organization.

Retaining staff who are skilled and talented turns out to be beneficial in the long run. Providing due credit for their contribution and rewarding them for their hard work are some proven talent retention strategies. They help in employee retention and commitment.

Well-defined retention process

The retention process is the end-to-end activities and tasks that need to be performed as part of the employee retention initiative. Embed the employee retention strategies lessons from the best companies into the process. Find out the best employee recruitment and retention policies and practices followed by big companies and incorporate the same into your process.

Never shy away from dedicating subsequent retention efforts while devising the retention processes. If you are truly concerned about how to improve retention, think of innovative ways to motivate employees in your worker retention process. Inspire your employees and make them feel a part of the organization are some of the key elements to be included in the retention processes.

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Employee retention techniques for remote teams

Employee retention techniques for remote teams need to be slightly different than that of teams physically present in the office premises. Remote employees need special attention to induce motivation since they operate in isolation; a very crucial part of the employee retention procedure. To retain staff working remotely, constant engagement is a necessity.

Frequent casual discussions to retain employees

To retain employee working remotely, the recommendation is to interact with them frequently via audio and video conference calls. Engage in casual and friendly discussions, enquiring about their well-being and health; one of the best remote staff retention ideas adopted by companies.

Guide and support them to help maintain a seamless work-life balance. Assure them of all help in any crisis. Provide them with the contact numbers for any emergency assistance. Appoint mentors to assist them as part of your employee retention guidelines.

Retaining Talent and skilled resources

Retaining talent and skilled resources in a remote mode of employment is a big challenge. You can seldom keep track of them opting for different companies. The more you lose your high performers, you are at risk of lowering customer satisfaction and risk of running the business as usual.

Employee retention norms hence must be strictly followed to increase employee retention, specifically hard-working, dedicated, creative, and talented associates. Offer respectable roles, provide perks and incentives, declare awards and tips for employee, etc. are some of the good retention ideas for successful employees.

Intermingle hiring and retention program

A retention program must be in conjunction with the hiring strategies. Both hiring and retention initiatives need to focus on employing the right talent and skill and retaining for a longer duration. A person who has a history to switch organizations is a risk to the company. Besides the skills of a person must be judged thoroughly during the recruitment process. All your human resources retention strategies will turn out to be futile if the foundation for employment is weak. Some companies provide additional employee hiring and employee retention training programs to their associates for designing better employee retention standards.

Development and growth opportunity – vital retention strategies for employers

One of the suggested and key retention strategies for employers is to guide the remote team in their future growth and career opportunities. Share with them the company’s hierarchical structure and allow them to opt for higher roles; one of the crucial incentive programs for employee retention.

If you are seeking an answer to the question on how to retain staff working remotely, focus on this particular element. Promotions are also another way to help remote employees in achieving their ambitions. Remember, a talented and effective employee will help you to achieve higher productivity and higher revenue than a new joiner.

Balance workload to increase retention

Balancing the workload of remote employees as per their bandwidth and work hours is one of the proven methodologies to increase retention. Burdening a single person with too many activities is the result of poor project planning and management.

Hence to answer the question on how to keep good employees, never ignore the workload factor. Distribute the tasks and activities among the team, calculating the effort required for each and the available working hours. Employee retention management can produce effective results once this aspect is taken care of.

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How to improve employee retention during Covid times?

With COVID-19 in full swing, a very big question asked by many companies is – “How to improve employee retention?”. Here are 3 ways of employee retention during the pandemic,

1. Allow them to claim their internet costs and remote connectivity tools and software costs beyond their salary as part of the employment retention norm
2. Conduct multiple mental and physical wellness programs for encouragement and to stay fit and healthy
3. Set up dedicated mentorship programs for team retention; providing guidance and support as and when needed

Employee retention programs examples

Here are some of the key employee retention programs examples for your knowledge. You can leverage the retention plan example of these big companies.

1. Hyatt has devised a “Change the Conversation” training program for its employees encouraging them to find out creative and innovative ways to resolve problems. This enables them to select leaders from their current workforce. The state-of-the-art learning and training initiatives have turned out to be super beneficial in employee retention governance. One of the best employee retention program examples.
2. Mars has introduced 5 principles in its protocol as part of the retention employment drive and employee retention program. Freedom, quality, efficiency, responsibility, and mutuality are its driving elements across the organization. This particular initiative for retention of employment led to a turnover of only 5%. Employees work for years after years leading to a successful human resources retention program.

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Use unremot watercooler software for employee retention

unremot virtual watercooler is one of the best software for employee retention especially for those who are working remotely. Employees can go for social interactions even though not being present face to face in the office. You can create a virtual watercooler corner, add your teammates and start chatting.

This assists in social connections beyond work hours or normal daily activities. People can discuss hobbies and interests, play games, conduct quizzes or riddles. Employees can discuss both their professional and personal issues for guidance and support.