Employee retention is especially critical to businesses and organizations with limited training and hiring budgets. Some level of vacancy should be expected due to retirements and promotions within the organization. Learn what your organization can do to minimize the number of personnel that unexpectedly leave for outside opportunities.
Conduct Exit Interviews
When employees do leave the job for other opportunities, conduct an exit interview. What questions should you ask in an exit interview? Ask how long the employee had been wanting to make a career change. Find out if the employee was seeking things outside that could have been offered at the organization. Ask if the employee had been approached about a similar opportunity within the organization. Find out if the supervisor had conducted annual performance reviews and regular workload meetings.
Regularly Reward Employee Performance
Certain milestones should be celebrated with individual employees and groups as they occur. However, this should not take the place of regularly recognizing individual employees or teams with certificates of appreciation, lunch, or other type of reward. The reward serves several purposes beyond the obvious. It motivates other employees to perform, and creates a workplace culture where all employees feel valued. This being said, feeling valued won’t prevent someone from taking a promotion elsewhere, but it will slow the rate of transfers into equivalent outside positions.
Motivate Employees With Challenging Projects
Do not hesitate to assign challenging projects to staff. However, do make sure to give adequate guidance to employees when delegating more difficult tasks. When staff feel adequately challenged, they are less likely to look for other opportunities.
Conduct 360 Degree Performance Appraisals
Evaluate the entire organization, including employees and supervising managers. Have employees participate in evaluating supervisors and encourage customers to submit evaluations of staff and management. You may be surprised at some of the things a 360 degree evaluation reveals, but the benefits are enormous. Not only will you have less people leaving the organization, you will have more customer satisfaction.
Conduct Regular Team Building Activities
Managing supervisors should conduct regular team building activities off-site or onsite. The important thing is everyone should be involved, and the activity should be relatively simple. Look for opportunities to play an athletic game or hire a consultant to lead the group through a formal team building exercise. Make these events a regular part of the schedule, such as quarterly or seasonally.
The ideas outlined in this article are not new, but they are often overlooked in times of financial stress and limited staff resources. Calculate the cost of losing staff, hiring and training. Then evaluate the resources required to conduct exit interviews, reward performance, motivate, and team build. Implement what makes sense for your type and size of organization. Start small and build slowly, and you’ll be retaining more employees in no time.
Related Reading: Five Tips for Improving Employee Morale and Performance
Resources: Willis Mushrush Reducing Employee Turnover MissouriBusiness.net
Susan M. Heathfield More Tips for Reducing Employee Turnover About.com
Jule Rizzardo - Jule Rizzardo is a freelance writer, specializing in small business advertising and management skill development.
