Most organisations and business leaders focus their time on creating an all-singing, all-dancing recruitment and talent acquisition strategy. While this is important, it’s more sensible to establish a retention strategy first. If you regularly need to recruit but aren’t expanding, you don’t have a recruitment problem; you have a retention problem.
So how do you retain the people that make your business work? I’ll tell you…
I’ve said this hundreds of times before, and I’ll say it again. This is probably the single most important thing to get right. If your induction sucks and you believe in the philosophy of ‘sink or swim’, I’ll put money on it that you have a high turnover of staff and are always having to recruit. Great for me, bad for you!
A poor induction will cause new employees to feel lost and uncomfortable. A proper induction will make them feel welcome and invested in your company.
Use our induction checklist to get a head start.
People are most engaged when they’re leaning, and employees become more valuable when they acquire new skills. To keep employees engaged and to continually gain value, always be teaching and mentoring. Sit with and support your staff in solving problems, give them the guidance and the tools they need, but let them finalise the solve. They will feel accomplished, smarter and get a sense of mentorship.
One of my client’s whom I won’t name, but I’ll say they’re a high-end property company in Oxford (you know who you are) has nailed this. Each time I have a candidate interview there, the first thing the candidate feeds back is “the atmosphere and environment is so nice! I’d love to work there.”. Is that not mission accomplished?! People take one look and instantly want to work there.
People don’t want to work in a dingey, down-beat, beige-everything offices. They want to be in bright, airy spaces with natural light and surrounded by positive, enthusiastic people. If you do nothing else, get your environment in check. If you can, get an office dog. Dogs make everyone happier.
We’re in 2020; this is easy. There should be no clunky, out-dated, difficult-to-use, annoying tech in your office anymore. Get everyone on hardware that runs fast and smoothly, migrate to user-friendly software systems and don’t over-complicate business processes. My favourite acronym is KISS – Keep It Simple, Stupid.
Employees know their value. If you want them to feel especially valued and that they work for an awesome employer, pay a slightly above average salary. This not only keeps staff on board and motivated, but they’ll also be telling all their friends about what a great company they work for, meaning you’ll be able to recruit quickly and cheaply when you expand via employee referrals.
This doesn’t have to be major, but people like to give back. Offer some extra leave for charitable or philanthropic endeavours. Not only will this retain employees, but you’ll also get awesome publicity for your business. Do well by doing good and all that.
This partly goes back to creating an enjoyable environment. Healthy employees are happy employees. And good health means fewer sick days and increased productivity. Win-win.
There is little more frustrating than a lack of or miscommunication. Ensure that nobody is difficult to get a hold of. If employee X needs to speak with employee Y to get their job done, it should be able to happen instantly. If said employees aren’t in the same building, introduce a company-wide WhatsApp group, or if you want to be Savvier,
check out Slack.
Again, touching on a winning environment. Don’t be one of those companies that just shrugs off wins and moves on to the next. Create a buzz about winning so people are encouraged to make it a habit. Someone just won a new client? Finish 30-minutes early and get to the pub! Just made the first sale of a new product? Get lunch on the company credit card. Someone beaten the company’s biggest sale value record? I’m out of ideas… buy them a cat or something.
Take a step back to look at where your problem is. Are you regularly having to replace leavers? I’m afraid that can’t be blamed on poor employee performance or bad hires, it’s something within the business that employees don’t like. Fix that problem and you’ll spend far less time and money recruiting. That being said, I’m not sure why I’ve told you all this… I want you to recruit, and via me!
Joking aside, if you are expanding and need help recruiting, click below to get in touch.
Jae Jackson-Loveridge | Director