Replacing your employees when they leave for another position can be frustrating and expensive. Hiring is always expensive, although the money is often better spent when it is a new position. Replacing employees is costly because you already spent money hiring and training the person who is now leaving. Luckily, implementing some retention strategies can help your workforce become more competitive and reduce turnover, which will save money in the long run.
Offer Incentives to Employees
Offer your employees incentives to keep them motivated and help them feel accomplished at work. You could offer a more generous paid time off policy to give them time to enjoy life outside of work. You could also give them small gifts, like lunch out or gift cards. If you have a website or employee newsletter, you could feature one employee each month. When you implement these things well, employees will feel more excited about their work, and this will keep them motivated.
One incentive you may want to offer is benefits. If you have a one-size-fits all approach to benefits, you may need to rethink it as your company grows. Consider offering multiple packages for employees to choose from. They can create their own benefits package from options like retirement accounts, health insurance, and life insurance. You could offer additional perks, like the ability to telecommute. These show employees that you also want to accommodate their personal needs and care about their well-being.
It can be expensive to offer the right types of incentives to your employees, but it can also be an effective strategy to help you save money on turnover costs. You can mitigate the costs by taking out a small business loan to get the funding you need. Having Accion Opportunity Fund business loans available make it easy to pay for benefits and other incentives to encourage employees to stay.
Offer Career Development
When you write a startup business plan you include plans for company growth, but you should also consider the growth of your employees as well. Give employees the chance to grow their skills at their jobs. You could offer professional development classes, tuition reimbursement, or training on valuable skills. By rewarding and encouraging this type of personal development, you will be able to improve overall morale and retain those who want to succeed in their careers. Consider promoting from within your company instead of hiring outside. If a manager leaves, start searching within the existing employees instead of going for outside candidates. If you promote outside candidates, employees may feel like there is no future for them at the company and stop working as hard.
Communicate Well
Good communication is an effective way to combat stress and what keeps businesses running. You and your team of managers should stay in contact with employees on a consistent basis. Share with them your goals and mission and show an interest in their work and personal life if appropriate. Keep up with potential conflicts between employees, and give them an open-door policy where they can come to you with questions or concerns about anything happening in the workplace. When you stay in regular communication with employees, they can stay more motivated, and they are more likely to care about the success of your organization.
Ask for Feedback
Getting feedback from your employees is essential to success, but it’s easy to accept feedback and never follow up on it. Many business owners don’t give the reasoning behind decisions that may go against the feedback they received. Of course, you will not be able to accommodate everyone’s requests, but you can show that you care by listening to them. Ask what you can do to fix any issues or address any potential concerns.
Perhaps an employee has recently had a child and needs more flexible hours to accommodate their child. See if you can schedule them for the times they are most available. On the other hand, if you get several requests for one specific thing, it may show that your team all wants a change. Many businesses require employees to work more hours during the holiday season when things get busier. But if all your employees request additional time off to spend with their families, it may be an indication that you need to hire additional seasonal staff to keep up with the increased demand at this time of the year.