On average, if an employee leaves, it costs employers around 33% of their annual salary to replace them. That makes it imperative for employers to consider retention strategies that keep employees on the job longer. It’s a particularly hard challenge right now, as millions of Americans have quit their jobs each month during the time known as The Great Resignation. How can employers turn things around and keep their workforce intact?
How Can You Prevent Employees From Leaving?
Why Employees Leave
According to a study published in HR Dive, people leave their jobs for:
- Better career development
- Work/life balance
- The behavior of supervisors
- Compensation and benefits
- Well-being
Other studies show a lack of employer recognition and even boredom play a role in employee loss. Sometimes, for these employees, just making a job change can alleviate their frustration in a job they feel like isn’t a fit anymore.
It’s important for employers to conduct exit interviews with their employees. Exit interviews can serve as the baseline for developing effective retention strategies. What retention strategies seem to address the most common reasons employees leave?
2023 Retention Strategies
Improving employee retention shouldn’t feel like an unattainable goal. There are several strategies you can employ that are low cost but will pay you back in high ROI. For example:
- Improve your onboarding processes to start new employees out on the right foot. Beyond teaching the employee about the job, you should work to make critical connections between the new employees and cross-functional teams.
- Establish a mentor for the new employee. This should be a defined program with goals that benefit both the mentee and the mentor. If you set it up properly, a good mentor program can help with retaining existing workers and new employees.
- Pay employees as well as you can. Evaluate salaries regularly to ensure they remain competitive. Also, offer your employees at least cost of living raises annually to help reengage them in the organization’s success. Without competitive compensation, you simply will not attract new talent to your business in the competitive hiring market we are experiencing today.
- If you’re offering new hire sign-on bonuses, please don’t forget about your existing employees. Consider how it would make a current employee feel if they saw your advertisement with a sign-on bonus? What if that current employee hasn’t had a raise in a while?
- Perks and rewards are a huge incentive for existing employees to keep them motivated and engaged. Schedule flexibility remains a huge perk, but quarterly production bonuses are also great tools for employee retention. Don’t make the employee wait till the end of the year for an annual bonus, either. Instead, make goals and rewards a regular part of every job to keep your people excited to be there.
- Offer continuous performance feedback. The goal-setting process should seek to engage the employee in creating their own performance metrics. Teach your managers to make this a collaborative, fun process that gets employees thinking about their future in your organization. Consider setting a career mapping process where employees envision themselves in a higher-level position in your company. Then work with the employee to provide them the training that gets you there.
Ready to Keep Your Top Talent?
FoxHire helps employers start new employees off on firm footing. We are an EOR with the technology and processes to help your business handle the complex tasks associated with hiring and retaining your workforce. Contact us to find out how we can help your business in 2023.
