The Importance of Retaining Your Employees
Retaining
your employees may be the most significant challenge that you as an
employer may face. After what often amounts to years of investment;
building a competent staff through training, mentoring and other types
of guidance, you do not want to lose your best resources. Your staff is
critical to the success of your business!
The Cost Issue
When
employees leave, they take with them key knowledge, experience, and
whatever training investment your organization has made in them.
Furthermore, you must spend valuable time and money replacing them and
training new recruits. Not only is the knowledge and experience of your
long term employees critical to the success of your business, you can't
discount the relationships that they have established with your
customers! Customers like coming to a business where they are recognized
by the staff. It creates customer loyalty and when a company is
continually replacing their staff, the company's reputation is damaged.
When
employees leave, there is also a significant financial loss to the
organization. The amount varies, according to the position of the
employee. There is the payout of outstanding vacation time, recruiting
fees and training costs for the new employee. In many cases, there is
also diminished productivity in the organization as a result of the low
morale of the remaining employees.
How Do You Avoid Employee Turnover?
Create
an effective retention plan that helps you understand why employees
stay with or leave an organization-and use that information to put in
place a range of strategies to ensure your organization meets employees'
needs and expectations. Make your business a place where employees
enjoy working. If an employee enjoys their work, they will do a better
job and it will be apparent to your customers. Your goal should be to
have your employees be ambassadors for your company!
- When
hiring, you need to start by properly explaining what the position
is and what duties will be required. Many times new employees
don't stay with an organization because they didn't completely
understand the position that they were hired for.
- Hire the
right person for the job. Make sure that the new hire has the
right skill-set, experience/education and personality for the
position.
- Provide the proper training, to insure that the
new staff member has a clear understanding of how to perform their
duties and is not learning by trial and error.
- Increase
your human resource skills, so that you will know how to create
loyalty and avoid losing your staff to the competition.
- Let
employees' be involved in the decisions that affect their work. It
is far easier to get employee "buy in" if they have been involved
in the process.
- Be aware that different things motivate
different people. For example: an employee with young
children may value having a more flexible schedule. The same person
may be motivated by other things once their children are older.
Staff Retention
