Welcome to the second post in our series on employee retention here on Fridays in the blog. This week, we’re going to look at curbing turnover — how to make an effective action plan for tackling this thorny issue.
With job markets starting to rebound after the financial crisis, now is the best time to set up an action plan. When the job market has improved, many are broaching for a rise in voluntary turnover. Get ahead of the game by starting off with researching retention issues in your organization. Once the research of retention issues is in place, it’s time to use that information to create an effective action plan that will curb turnover in your organization.
Two approaches to take when creating your strategies are to use blanket strategies and tailored strategies.
Blanket Strategies
Blanket strategies are generic plans that will work across any type of organization. These are the main points to keep in mind when using blanket strategies:
Salaries
A paramount aspect of retention, it is important to ensure salaries are comparable to industry standards and competitors. According to a recent survey conducted by SHRM and CareerJournal.com, 53 percent of employees said that the reason they would seek another job is to attain better compensation and benefits. Offering competitive salaries is a technique used by the majority of savvy companies as it is a problem-specific solution for employees. Plus, given the costs associated with replacing staff, increasing salaries, and offering attractive benefits, it is generally more cost effective and easier to implement.
Other popular strategies include offering better holiday and vacation allowances. Employees need to rest and recharge without feeling vulnerable for taking vacations, so ensure that holidays are given without making the employee feel guilty or worried about leaving.
Also, providing tuition reimbursements for job related training and courses can help. Colleen Flaherty from the National Bureau of Economic Research claims her research has shown that participating in tuition reimbursement programs does reduce employee turnover, especially in training employees in skills that are firm specific.
Recruitment
Review the recruiting process and system you have in place to ensure a better employee-organization fit. As they say, prevention is better than a cure, and choosing the right employees from the start will lessen problems in the future. Use competency-based questions and behaviour testing to screen candidates for the right fit, such as the software we’ve developed here at ClearFit. Furthermore after hiring, employee onboarding is crucial, as studies report that employees often decide how long they will spend at the organization within their first few weeks.
Motivation
Keep employees satisfied in their positions. Employee motivation should be considered a top priority for management, as a top reason for voluntary turnover is always employee satisfaction. Motivation can entail a number of aspects — a lack of motivation for the position, feeling stale and stagnant, and a lack of career development opportunities within the organization. Everyone wants a job that they love, that they are passionate about, and that is fulfilling, so if the organization and the position can satisfy what the employee wants, then they are less likely to go elsewhere.
If you don’t think the position will ever be able to provide satisfaction and motivation, as let’s face it, some positions never will, make an extra effort to provide the employee with home and work balance. Allow flexible work hours and work from home arrangements — as long as the employee is productive it should not matter what time they start or finish, and where.
These are just a few examples of blanket strategies; try brainstorming more ideas that can apply to your workplace.
Tailored Strategies
Tailored strategies are strategies that are entirely specific to your organization and your employees. Check research to identify any specific retention issues. For example, some issues could be difficulties balancing home and work life, quality of relationships between a supervisor or a manager, or the amount of internal policies and bureaucracy, and so on. Gather these issues and create tailored strategies that address each point. Think of direct problem solving remedies, which will address each issue at its core, and don’t be afraid to be creative and innovative with your solutions.
For example, the Royal Netherland Army had a serious shortage of soldiers and found current recruiting methods were not producing desired results. They found that the recruitment process was too long, sometimes lasting up to twelve weeks, and that relocation was impacting turnover. They made some difficult decisions and overhauled the process to shorten recruitment to four weeks maximum. Then to address the relocation problems, they decided to hire regionally, so that soldiers would be placed near their hometowns. Their actions led to a much more successful hiring and retention of soldiers than previously achieved.
This is also a great opportunity to review what procedures are effective or ineffective in your workplace.
Get Feedback and Setting Goals
Confer with relevant managers and staff to garner opinion and feedback about the overall effectiveness of these different strategies. Discuss which strategies are most feasible, cost-effective, and promising. Getting support from managers and staff is important to set realistic goals. It will save time and money if communication is consistent with relevant managers, rather than just assuming what their needs are or assuming what will work.
Once you have a curbing turnover retention plan in place, set goals. Ask the following questions:
- By when do you want to see results?
- By what percentage do you want to increase retention during the first phase of your plan?
Join us next week as we start looking into concrete implementation strategies you can use in your company to curb turnover and improve employee retention, starting with the employee equity approach.
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