7 Effective Employee Retention Strategies

One of the most crucial processes in every company is hiring. It affects the whole company's success since the team qualifications determine the possibility to solve different issues, find new solutions and effectively implement them.

However, there is one more vital process related to hiring. It is employee retention. And it is way more important and complex since there are a lot of competitors. Every company tries to create the best conditions for employees working and, moreover, does a lot of measures to hunt an employee.

That is why every C-level manager and hiring department has to design strong employee retention strategies. We want to tell you about 16 of the most effective retention strategies that are used in such companies as Google, Apple, Tesla, Meta, and others.

What is Employee Retention

An employee retention program is a set of measures aimed to save the employee at a company. There are several factors that determine the retention rate. And this rate affects the company’s success in the market.

To calculate a retention rate, you have to:

1. Choose a certain period.

2. Divide the employees in 2 groups: those who were at the company at the beginning of the period and those who stayed at the end.

3. Multiply the numbers by 100.

The result will help you to understand whether your HR department is effective and what things should be done to improve employee retention.

Retention Strategies

The main goal of every strategy is to encourage an employee to stay at a company. Moreover, each strategy is aimed to keep employees in a good mood, consider what employees feel, and motivate them to work better. So, here are top retention ideas to encourage employees.

1. Create a Culture and Follow It

It is very easy to improve hard and even soft skills since there are a lot of courses for any discipline and job position as well. However, the thing that keeps great companies together is a cultural identity. Every big company has a set of measures to check the interests and values of a candidate and understand whether the company culture is valuable for him.

Here is one example from real life. When Larry Page and Sergey Brin had to find a CEO for Google, they found Eric Shmidt. His expertise and experience were brilliant for all the company’s goals. However, they had to understand Eric’s cultural mindset. They invited him to a Burning Man festival. After partying, Eric became a CEO at Google. According to an interview, they had a great time together.

The cultural aspect is very important for talent retention since every employee spends a lot of time working. If anything disturbed him, he would find another job.

2. Create Hybrid Workspaces

Every person is an individual and has a lot of wishes. Some people love individual workplaces, and some want to work in an open space office; some need private space and remote work. To build a big company you have to satisfy everybody at once.

In the past, many companies didn’t care about the workspace. Mostly, there were big, open space offices without any borders. There was a lot of noise and distracting factors. Such things may affect productivity. Moreover, many employees reported that they feel tired after a working day.

That is why nowadays, in successful companies, you can find hybrid workplaces. Any employee can work in a conference hall (if it is very), at his private workplace, at an open space workplace, and so on. Moreover, the pandemic proved that remote work could be very effective as well. That is why more and more companies allow their employees to choose remote work as primary.

3. Reward not Only for Results

Rewarding is an integral part of an employee retention program. It creates motivation and a positive mood for every employee. It is obvious that you have to pay a good salary for a job. Nonetheless, it is not enough.

It is a usual practice to pay a lot of bonuses:

• for good results;

• for finding new solutions;

• for every quarter.

Yet, more and more employees started to think that such a rewarding system is something usual and they will always receive bonuses. In this case, managers have to create a more variable rewarding system.

The employee has to get the reward not only for a result but for an effort as well. Every action should be minded. It might be enough to say “thank you” for small research. Yet if it is a big amount of work or, for example, finding new software for a company, a manager has to give an additional day-off.

The main goal of rewarding is to make the employee feel like a part of something big. As soon as he gets such a feeling, he will always be in a good mood.

4. Take Care of Employees Health

As an HR specialist or C-level manager, you aren’t interested in employees with bad health. Otherwise, a lot of work won’t be done correctly and in time. That is why it is very important to take care of their health.

You don’t have to treat them and give medicines since you are not a doctor or a nurse. However, you have to provide insurance and always know about any diseases.

Moreover, every manager has to take care of the mental health of an employee. Since burnout became something usual for office workers, a lot of productive employees started to show worse results. And the reason is not about rewards or someone's attitude. The employee might be unmotivated in general.

In this case, you have to speak with him and understand his problems. Treat every employee as a human being, and all of them will feel perfect.

5. Reduced Workdays

It might be surprising for some chief officers, but a reduced workday can improve the productivity of an employee. The reason is that there is a borderline for human productivity. Some people can work extra hours, but it is rather an exception than a rule.

Our brain can’t work effectively on the same task for 40 hours a week. It needs some time to relax or work on other tasks. That is why those who change their activity at least once an hour are more productive.

Moreover, the researches represented that if you divide a workflow in such a way:

• 1 hour working;

• 10 minutes relaxing;

You will be several times more effective than working without pauses. And if the working day is shorter, the brain has a better concentration. The reason is that a person understands that he/she has less time to cope with all tasks.

So don’t hesitate to reduce your workdays. Don’t hesitate to allow employees to leave an office earlier. Just hold an experiment and compare the results. You will see that all of the employees are in a better mood and company results arose.

6. Shape the Growth and Self-Development

Here is one more thing about a human’s brain. It always needs new kinds of activity. The reason is that our brain can make any process automated. In this case, it doesn’t get enough dopamine, so we become upset with some things.

The way out is very simple. Read books, do sports, try new hobbies. In other words, you have to feed the brain with emotions. And the same is about your employees. Encourage them to do something new.

For example, start to discuss different books and films, invite some colleagues to a football match or a concert and so on. Ask your employee to learn something about soft skills (e.g., time management) and create a presentation for the staff. To make the presentation visually appealing, they can utilize free PowerPoint templates available online. There are numerous ways to motivate and engage your employees.

7. Practice a Feedback Culture

Don’t hesitate to hear real feedback about you as a leader or about your company. Let the employees tell everything they think about the company and its approaches. This is the only way to improve the employee retention strategy.

If you become a ‘dictator’ and push your employees to tell only the good about your company, you won’t succeed. If you don't encourage them to speak about the things going on, you won’t succeed as well.

The working day is a big part of an employee's life, and he wants to talk about it. So your task is to hear the things that an employee wants to tell you.

Conclusion

The last 2 years have shown a lot of changes in companies’ approaches to encourage employees. Moreover, there was a great rise in businesses. In this case, the head-hunters and HR managers are more active on the market. They do their best to find the most qualified candidate and hire him for a certain company.

At the same time, every candidate understands these things. They know that a company can offer some rewards and unique programs. Thus, they always compare the working conditions.

The companies’ task is to create a strong retention program to hire professionals only and encourage them to stay at a company for a long time. Use our advice and share your own.

Author Bio: Jean Hartley is a professional content writer for write my essay service. If you want to hire someone to write a paper, she will help you to prepare an overview, report, essay, or another paper. Jean will make you amazed with the final interesting content or any other you may have for writing.