Great businesses are built by and with great people. If you can’t hold onto your talent, you’ll feel it in your bottom line. With the world in flux and the future uncertain, we need to keep our people as happy as possible.
Employee retention is a key concern for HR, especially while working remotely during a plague. Here are five tips that will help you increase retention, starting now.
Five tips for retaining top talent
1. Encourage friendliness across ranks
A friendly hello, especially from an unexpected (and higher-up) colleague, can make someone’s day.
While working from home it’s easy to feel isolated from teammates and stakeholders, nevermind people you don’t usually interact with. By helping your people develop cross-organizational relationships—may we suggest forming Clubs?—you’ll keep them loyal, engaged, and involved.
2. Up the stakes
When was the last time you pushed a direct report out of their comfort zone?
Work with managers on building learning and development plans for their direct reports. Creating individualized plans will help each employee determine their growth pace and direction, allowing you to grow together and enabling them to stay productive and engaged at your organization for longer.
3. Encourage small acts of kindness
We’ve all had some tough days recently, and sometimes an unexpected nicety is all it takes to turn a frown upside down.
Get employees and managers into the habit of offering to help teammates out, chatting about their days, and generally doing nice things for each other. Reduce feelings of isolation and burnout by taking advantage of Kudos posts in the bob platform and/or giving employees other channels for employee recognition. Bonus.ly, for example, puts a dollar value on nice gestures, allowing employees to “tip” each other from a budget pre-set by the organization.
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4. Create a culture of teamwork
As they say, “If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.” Work with people managers on building camaraderie on their teams, so no one ever feels like they’re working alone. Everyone should have a teammate or pal they can go to when they’re feeling overwhelmed or out of ideas—someone who will listen and help them brainstorm.
By encouraging your people to develop dependencies within the organization, you’ll not only let them know that it’s okay to show vulnerability, but you’ll also build internal support systems. Help your people bring their true selves to work by allowing them to share their needs and weaknesses without punishment.
5. Foster a sense of belonging from day one
Belonging = Happiness = Retention
To keep retention rates high, you need to start on the first day of onboarding. Keeping your people engaged with each other, the organization, and its values is the key to high retention.
Developing a retention-focused onboarding program emphasizing connections between employees, learning and development plans, and professional success will pay off in the long run. When it comes to retention, it’s never too early to start!
