In the ninth installment of my blog series on the Employee Life Cycle, we tackle one of the most important aspects of being an employer – the retention of your very best employees. It’s a lot of hard work to get good people to join your company, so once they do, it’s your responsibility to make sure you’re doing everything you can to keep your employees happy (or they will leave). Here are my top ten recommendations for employee retention:
Pay attention to your employees’ moods
It’s not that hard to look and listen – well, maybe that’s entirely not true. Since COVID, most workplaces have gone virtual, and it’s not as easy as it once was to observe your employees. Nowadays, you might need to be a little more attentive. You can’t sit back and assume everything is good anymore. Proactive communication and check-ins with your employees are essential. If your best people suddenly get quiet or no longer seem engaged – pay attention, because you’ve got a problem. If someone appears unhappy or withdrawn, talk to them about it. Don’t let time pass before you get to the bottom of things. If it’s something you can fix, do it as quickly as possible. However, it’s outside of your control, do whatever you can to mitigate or improve the situation. The key is not to be tone-deaf. People are communicating how they feel – even if they say nothing.
Listen and respond to feedback
My company uses a fantastic employee engagement tool called OfficeVibe. While it doesn’t quite beat face-to-face feedback, it does provide employees with regular opportunities to express their sentiments about their employment. Your HR department can configure the tool to ask quantifiable questions and follow up with open-ended questions. If you have a tool like this but ignore the results, why bother having it at all? My former company was very good at monitoring the state of employee happiness. They took the data from OfficeVibe and studied it, looking for themes and potential improvements the company could make to improve employee morale. So, listen and respond – don’t let valuable employee insights go into a black hole – do something about it.
Provide recognition and rewards when earned
As part of this blog series, I covered this as an independent topic, but it bears saying again: recognize and reward your employees. When someone does an exemplary job, pulls off a fantastic feat, brings a struggling team together, etc., you acknowledge it and celebrate! I just wrapped a client engagement, and I received unexpected thanks from our program manager. It’s a small token of appreciation, but it matters to me. Knowing that I’m contributing to my company and client’s success is what drives me to succeed, and getting recognition is a positive sign that I’m doing something right.
Ensure psychological safety
Have you ever been in a “hostile work environment?” Well, I have been, and it wasn’t any fun at all. When you don’t trust anyone and people are out for themselves and willing to stab anyone else in the back, it’s probably a good time to consider alternative employment opportunities. The opposite environment is what you want – one in which it’s safe to share, be vulnerable, and even to fail. If you’re afraid of retaliation, saying the wrong thing, or making enemies, you won’t be allowed to succeed. As a leader within your organization, it’s vital to ensure your people feel safe and heard. Your job is to protect and advocate for your team – not throw them under the bus for your purposes. Be a leader who cares and provides a safe and healthy work environment for your people.
Provide opportunities for advancement
Not being promoted at my last employer is the number one reason I left. I was an employee-owner of that company, and I was with the company for almost eight years. Highly invested, I regularly went above and beyond an employee’s regular call of duty. Although I got recognition from the organization’s top, none of my direct managers ever promoted me. I sense that internal politics were at play, but I don’t get into that; maybe I shot myself in the career foot by staying out of it. Either way, despite regularly expressing my goals and being promised that I would get promoted if I would jump through just one more hoop, I wasn’t able to advance my career, so I had to go somewhere where I could.
Get creative with your employment incentives
Employee incentives spawned this blog series. Since I recently made a job change, it was an opportunity to see first-hand what employers are trying to do to keep their talent. As I’ve said before, it’s an employee’s market, and if you’re unhappy with your job right now, there’s no reason NOT to look around for other opportunities. So, once you have a great employee, how can you entice them to stay? It’s not too challenging if you know what motivates people (see my previous blog on this topic). The interesting thing is that organizations are getting more and more creative with their perks to stay competitive. It’s not enough to do what every other employer is doing – you have to find something that makes your company stand out. Figuring out your “secret sauce” and being unique will help you stand apart.
Give employees exciting and challenging work
I’m not the kind of person who would be satisfied or happy standing at an assembly line putting together the same widgets all day, every day. I’d probably do something drastic to remove myself from that kind of a job. For knowledge workers like me, I must have challenging and exciting work. I don’t like getting bored, and I always want to learn new things. Being a consultant, I have the best of both worlds because I get to work for various clients in different industries, markets, technologies, and even organization types. Having this kind of variety is highly stimulating and keeps me actively engaged. It’s rewarding to me personally and professionally when I can be part of a solution that makes people’s lives better – it gives me purpose.
Keep high-performing teams together
If you have ever been on a high-performing team, you know that it’s truly magical. You never want to break up when you have a team like that. So many organizations still do projects instead of focusing on product development. Projects have a distinct beginning and end – by definition, projects are “temporary endeavors” – so it’s inevitable that you’ll have to break up the team. But when you build a robust and trusting set of people into a high-performing group, breaking them apart is the most deflating thing you can do. Teams like this will try to do whatever they can to avoid splitting up the team. Unfortunately, most companies don’t understand the product approach and see people as cogs in a machine, easily replaceable; nothing could be further from the truth. Keep your rock star teams together if you want to see maximum productivity and value delivery.
Offer mentorship and coaching
I don’t care what stage of your life or career you’re in; people want to continue growing and progressing. Each job is an opportunity to learn as much as you can and increase your knowledge and experience, so as you move forward in your career, you become more and more valuable. To enable this, offer your employees the chance to have or be a coach or mentor. Earlier in my career, I was blessed to have a great mentor when I transitioned into Business Analysis. I had a guide who helped me understand my role and how to practice the profession. Once I had been a BA for enough time, I felt it was only appropriate for me to pay it forward and become a coach and mentor to others. Over the last several years, I have had the privilege of helping guide others to gain new skills and confidence in their roles.
Conduct team-building activities
Holding activities to build your team seems like a total no-brainer to me, but I’m still amazed by how many “managers” treat their employees like resources rather than people. If you find yourself with a manager who knows nothing about you, your personal life, interests, hobbies, family, challenges, etc., then it’s probably time to run for the hills. Managers who keep their staff at arms-length probably aren’t investing in relationships with their employees because they don’t know if they’ll be around for long. People who behave like this don’t inspire or deserve your loyalty. So, get your team together – get to know them and help them learn about each other. You can do something as simple as hanging out at a local watering hole after work, planning activities outside the office, or holding a virtual happy hour. Keep shop talk out of it and learn about the people who work for you – they’ll appreciate it and will be more likely to stick around.
Final Thoughts
Well, this blog turned out to be a lot longer than I had planned, so I’ll have to save my five bonus retention tips for the next installment in this series. The main point is that you need to watch, listen, and follow your best employees’ cues; otherwise, they won’t stay for long. Give them learning and growth opportunities, provide them with exciting and challenging work, and treat them like people – not just resources.
If you missed any of the other blogs in the Employee Life Cycle series, check them out now:
- How to Understand the Employee Life Cycle
- 10 Ways to Attract Potential New Employees
- 10 Ways to Recruit Potential New Employees
- Top 10 Tips for Interviewing Potential New Employees
- Top 10 Tips for Hiring New Employees
- 10 Tips for Successfully Onboarding New Employees
- 10 Ways to Boost New Employee Performance
- What drives New Employees to Grow and Develop?
- 10 Ways to Recognize and Reward your Employees
Now, it’s your turn. What are some creative things your company does to retain its employees? Is there anything unique or cool that you’ve tried? I’d love to know what works for you, so please let me know in the comments below!