It'll be to late if you only found out why a valuable employee move during the exit interview. You already missed the golden opportunity not only to increase your team productivity but also opportunity to actually strengthen the team and motivate the organization. Touching base and doing pulse check is important every now and then to retain employee. But is that enough ?
1. Look for the Long Game - it's always start at the beginning
You have to look at this as a long game, and take steps to ensure you're doing it right by making sure each employee is completely engaged with and part of the company's ongoing success.
How can you choose candidates that are more likely to stay? There are some key indicators right on their resume, look for candidates with longevity at their previous jobs.
You're looking beyond what's written on the resume. Have they worked at a company for many years through ups and downs? That speaks to loyalty, perseverance, engagement. We need to understand if someone who plays team sports, who has committed to volunteer or other activities outside of work — that can help tell you that they are invested in a cause, a team, a sport, yes, but also that they have the mindset to stick with something they really care about.
2. Provide ongoing education and clear paths to advancement
Promoting from within not only provides a clear path to greater compensation and responsibility, it also helps employees feel that they're valued and a crucial part of the company's success. Of course, promotions go hand-in-hand with employee development and education, and this should be another tool in your retention arsenal,
Whether by corporate training to help foster the acquisition of new skills, new technologies or new processes or through tuition reimbursement from outside courses, furthering your employees' education can help them feel valued and invested in the company
Do note that learning cannot just be an afterthought — it must be a core focus of any strong organization, A focus on education is also key to higher retention rates. Investing in your employees’ education can help retain talent and intellectual property at a time when there's stiff competition for both.
3. Offer the right benefits
Benefits and perks play a large role in keeping employees happy, engaged and healthy. But benefits can go far beyond healthcare coverage and paid sick leave. You also should consider offering stock options or other financial awards for employees who exceed performance goals or who stay with you for a predetermined time period. Nearly nine in 10 companies view incentive compensation and bonuses as key to retaining employees in the next five years.
Flexible work schedules, the opportunity to work remotely and generous paid leave policies also go a long way toward helping employees feel they are valued well beyond what they contribute at the workplace, as flexible working arrangements ranked fourth among the top benefits for retaining talent, behind health insurance, bonuses, and paid time off.
4. Engage with Open Communication
Creating open communication between employees and management can help foster a sense of community and a shared purpose. This can start with opening up my own personal network of former colleagues, friends, networking contacts to any other employee that wants to network and talk to someone at other companies and in other industries,
5. Leverage Technology
This goes hand in hand with offering the right benefits, Everyone knows that the business changes more than once a year, and so do people. So let the technology and tools lets businesses send one highly targeted question at pre-set intervals — maybe monthly, or even weekly — so that HR can identify issues early on and rectify them.
Organizations have incredible amounts of employee data available — why not use it to identify who’s most likely to leave, why, and then take steps to prevent that. While on the surface, an employee’s departure may seem obvious or to fit a pattern, but using AI and advanced analytics can help pinpoint underlying factors that contribute to attrition, ones that might not be as obvious as you thought.