There are good reasons to focus on retention: If employees don’t find what they are looking for at your organization, they may find it with another employer.
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The pandemic has definitely changed the workplace and most likely for years to come. Every company is doing its best to sail these uncharted waters. But for fast-growth companies, where hiring and often takes place at accelerated rates and where turnover can inflict disproportionate pain, the current situation is particularly acute.
Not only has the current environment changed office aesthetics, it has changed people. Layoffs and furloughs have caused stress and anxiety. Uncertainty about continuing to provide for your family or achieve work goals is certainly on most minds.
Now is the time to invest in your employees to ensure retention. Insuring retention not only means investing in your employees
but also listening more closely than ever to their needs as we navigate the new social environment.
A report from LinkedIn’s Global Talent Trends 2020 showed employees stay 41 percent longer at companies that hire from within. Such a choice not only helps the bottom line for a company, it also improves employee loyalty. Turnover from a lack of internal career opportunities costs close to $49 million each year, as estimated in the report. Since 2015, internal hiring has only increased 10 percent!
The trends report showed that the most important aspects of retaining talent were:
1. Employee experience
2. People analytics
3. Internal recruiting
4. Multigenerational work force
Growing Challenge
With more than one-third of employers (39 percent) concerned about losing their top talent, employee retention remains critical. Employers who hope to retain valuable staff continue to look for new ways to keep top performers in-house. The LinkedIn report states that in order to retain talent, companies will need to do a better job understanding employee needs and wants from an empathetic standpoint.
Investing in Employees
Empathy is the ability to understand or identify with another person’s situation or feelings. In this vein, companies are choosing to shift their focus from shareholder value to an investment in their employees. This includes digging into human behavior, recruiting from within and focusing on the various needs of a multigenerational work force.
Finding an individualistic approach could be more import-ant than ever considering the wide range of generations in the workplace. Today, employees include representation from the Boomers, GenX, Millennials, and the beginning of Gen Z.
Each generation possesses its own wants and desires for a workplace where one would want to stay. In response, companies are updating policies to better appeal to a multi-generational work force and placing an increased focus on improving the employee experience to increase retention (77 percent).
Boosting Retention
- Open the lines of communication and to be receptive to different concerns and requests for flexibility due to the changes in social and work environments.
- Foster a positive employment culture—employees spend a lot of time at work, so make it an environment de-signed to emphasize communication and collaboration across departments.
- Make communication a priority—no one wants to be the last to know. When in doubt, over-commu-nicate to employees and make check-ins a priority so you know what is on employee’s minds.
- Generate growth opportunities—explore how improvements in compensation and benefits, training, flexible work schedules and a purposeful mission can make people more willing to happily remain in a workplace.
- Reduce micromanagement—the core of employee retention is having good managers. Leadership must dem-onstrate appreciation and not be afraid to hire smart employees who desire to challenge the status quo.
If employees do not find what they are looking for at your organization, there’s always another employer who might better fit the bill.
