It’s one of the great mysteries of the working world: What are the best strategies for keeping your employees? 

Employee retention should be at the heart of every vision for future growth, expansion, and success. A longstanding team has deep institutional knowledge, vast expertise, and a solid understanding of your clients, customers, and industry; when people who have worked in a position for years decide to go elsewhere, your company is poorer in many ways from that loss. 

So how do you fix that? Here are some pieces of advice for boosting your employee retention. 

How to Boost Employee Retention

Ask for feedback. Start asking during exit interviews why someone decided to leave the position. It’s important to understand why they wanted to go elsewhere. Listen closely to the reasons given and take note of them. Then ask your whole team for feedback—not just during annual reviews but on a regular basis. Try to determine if there’s an issue with your corporate culture that needs to be addressed in order to prevent a greater turnover rate and to make your current employees more invested and engaged in their work. 

Compare salaries. While pay isn’t the only reason employees leave, it can certainly be a factor. Understand what your competitors are paying their staff at various positions and titles and see where your salaries fall. Are you ahead of the curve, at the same level, or behind? Make adjustments as possible; if you can’t boost salaries, consider adding to their benefits packages or making other changes to improve their work-life balance and help them feel like they’re being fully and well compensated for their efforts here. 

 Offer flexible work arrangements when possible. The working world was 100% office-oriented… and then the pandemic hit. Many people find themselves just as productive—if not more so—working remotely, whether at home or in a different setting. They’re saving the stress of the commute, the cost of having to pay for transit or filling their gas tanks as often, and they can focus on their work without distractions. A study from Deloitte found that 66% of financial service leaders would rather leave their current job than have to return full time to the office; they like the other arrangements and find it’s better for their lives. If your company doesn’t already offer remote and hybrid arrangements, it’s time to see if that’s possible. 

Work toward the future. Employees, especially younger, ambitious ones, aren’t just thinking about where they want to be this year or next; they’re thinking about their long-term goals. They know that, in a competitive job market, they can’t let their skills get dull or old. Incorporating a continuing education program with workshops, access to training and retreats in which people can add to their abilities and keep their skills sharp, can go a long way toward retaining employees. Coupling that with opportunities to move up in title and position by offering promotions to your existing employees lets them know you want to invest in them and their future here, so they don’t need to go elsewhere to advance their career. 

Show appreciation. The power of saying thank you and showing your employees you appreciate them cannot be understated. If your team has shown indications of burnout, of feeling like their work goes unnoticed, especially if there’s been turnover and they’ve been asked to take on additional clients and responsibilities without knowing when new staffing will be added, it’s going to take a lot less for a competitor to lure them away with the promise of more money, more support, and better work-life balance. Your team needs to know you see their efforts and you are thankful and grateful for them. Create a company-wide program for thanking your teams for their hard work, whether that’s a monthly birthday celebration, a regular coffee treat, group lunch, occasional party, or other break from their daily work to show that they are valued. People who know they matter to their team and that they have the support of their management will be more engaged and more likely to stay. 

Want to Learn More?

The most important thing a company can do is retain the workers already under its roof. New clients are great; growing success is the goal and it’s a wonderful thing to achieve, but if you’re constantly losing time to searching for new employees and then dedicating time and resources to training them, you’re losing out twice, first in the institutional knowledge and second in having to start all over again with someone new. 

If you’d like more advice on employee retention, or if you need help finding new employees to fill the spaces left by those who have left, it’s time to call FurstStaffing. With decades of experience in helping our clients find great job candidates, we can help you add talented, experienced employees to your team who have the background you need to get back up to speed quickly.

Call FurstStaffing today and learn what we can do for you.