There’s no way of getting around it: high employee turnover affects your bottom line, and it’s one of the hottest topics in the HR world right now. Turnover can damage your company morale, delay critical projects, and cost your company over double an employee’s average salary to find and train a replacement. So, how can your organization reduce employee turnover and positively impact your businesses? We’ve compiled a list of effective strategies to help.
1. Clearly define your company culture and then look for new hires who embody it.
A key way to reducing employee turnover is to actively recruit people who embody your company’s core values. Before you do this, you should have your core values clearly defined. A well-defined culture is imperative to knowing who would be a good fit for your business, so if you don’t have a clear understanding of this, enlist a culture expert to help.
After you’ve defined your core values and company culture, ensure a potential new employee meshes well with your current team, communicates openly, and has the right attitude to grow within your company. A great way to hone in on these personality traits is through behavioral interview questions. Ask questions like, “Tell me about a time you were under a lot of pressure. What was going on, and how did you get through it?” to get an interviewee talking about how they react to certain situations. This is a great way to measure how potential candidates handle stress, communication, and working through challenges, which are critical traits to understand before hiring.
2. Develop a smooth onboarding process.
Starting a new position can often be overwhelming. There’s so much to learn, from booking conference rooms to your more complex day-to-day tasks. If your company can make onboarding as easy as possible, your new employees will build a stable foundation at their jobs that carries on throughout their careers.
The first steps to streamlining your onboarding process are to educate new employees on your company’s core values, and then to publicly recognize them when they demonstrate behavior aligned with those values. Next, ensure new employees are provided the training and support they need to thrive in their first few weeks so they have the context, tools, and knowledge needed to solve challenges for years to come.
Additionally, employees who feel connected to each other drive retention, so be sure to introduce new hires to their teams and other departments they’ll work with as soon as possible. Hiring and onboarding is a team-driven process, so ensure all team members do their part to ingratiate a new team member into the workforce. This is a key component to reducing turnover.
3. Check in regularly with your employees about their career goals.
Employees who feel like they’re stagnating in their careers are more likely to look for a job elsewhere. To reduce employee turnover, have regular check-ins with your employees and communicate that your company has opportunities for growth and that your management team is invested in your employees’ futures.
Having a clear understanding of your employees’ ultimate career goals is a good way to understand what your team members want out of their day-to-day work life and what they envision for their futures. It’s important to check in often about these goals as well, as they’re likely to evolve as your employees grow within the company.
Consider involving your employees in decisions that affect their jobs and the overall direction of the company whenever possible so they can practice leadership skills, have a voice during times of transition, and feel a sense of ownership over their positions. Reducing employee turnover means providing a clear path to career advancement.
4. Emphasize work-life balance.
Work-life balance is an increasingly vital need for employees, so be attentive to this need to reduce employee turnover and offer more flexibility in the workplace where you can. Companies looking to improve their work-life balance should consider offering telecommuting, on-site daycare, and flexible working hours.
While these offerings are not possible for all companies, there are still ways to offer ways to increase work-life balance, like flexible lunch times or the ability to leave early if an employee needs to pick up their child from daycare or attend night classes.
5. Encourage rewards and recognition in the workplace.
Meaningful rewards and recognition is one of the most cost-effective ways to reduce employee turnover, increase productivity, and encourage happiness at work.
Recognition should be four things:
- Specific
- Personal
- Unexpected
- Frequent
When an employee achieves an important goal or milestone, send a personalized message of congratulations right away instead of waiting until a six month or year-end review. This gesture demonstrates that management values and appreciates employees for their work.
Employees working in an environment where they are regularly recognized for their work are less likely to look for other jobs, and — even better — are more productive at work. Recognition is especially impactful when made publicly, so be sure to recognize outstanding employees in front of others.
You can also reward successful employees with paid vacations, trophies, company swag, and much more. Basing your pay scale off of performance also ensures the right people are rewarded for their work. This way, your key players are more likely to stay at your company if they feel like their efforts are truly recognized and rewarded company-wide.
6. Offer unique benefits.
Of course, when people look for jobs, they look for benefits packages that can meet their most basic needs. They want a package that can provide healthcare coverage, life insurance, and compensation that enables them to live without penny-pinching.
But as the workforce evolves and these basic offerings become commonplace, your benefits package must stand out to attract and retain the best talent and reduce employee turnover.
One thing you can do to amp up your benefits package is offer a corporate perks and rewards platform. Employee discount and rewards programs can help you stand out among a competitive hiring market and increase employee engagement and retention.
These platforms can often be customized by region so employees around the globe can access discounts and recognize and reward each other.
Additionally, providing an employee perks package drives home the message that your organization understands the importance of work-life balance. Your employees have lives outside the office, and offering perks encourages employees to participate in fun experiences on their off-time, while still remembering that these experiences are provided by your company.
7. Give meaningful feedback regularly.
Employees who understand their strengths and areas for improvement demonstrate more self-awareness and a stronger commitment to the workplace. Providing continuous feedback is proven to be more effective in reducing employee turnover and keeping employees happy in the workplace.
When providing feedback, never blindsight employees; give your employees at least a few days notice that they will receive feedback. When providing this feedback, clearly identify successes and opportunities for improvement.
One way to do this is by plussing, a term coined by Pixar, where criticism is coupled with a meaningful suggestion on how to fix the issue. After you discuss the issue, the employee has the power to accept or reject the suggestion, providing more balance and autonomy during the feedback process.
Plussing provides a constructive way to motivate employees and proactively address problems rather than delivering confusing feedback layered within positives. When employees have a clear understanding of their areas for improvement, they feel less inclined to seek out new positions with stronger management.
Reducing Employee Turnover: Transform Your Workforce
Employee turnover is always going to be a challenge, but you can tackle this problem by taking meaningful steps to make your workplace a more positive environment where people want to work. Transform your company into a place that understands the needs of its employees, focuses on them, and makes wise business decisions by retaining your best people.
