Employers have had to adapt at breakneck speed over the past few years as the world dealt with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Working from home became the norm as countries enforced lockdowns, but businesses face another challenge and that’s retaining talent.
Research from the University of Birmingham and Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development found that 6.5 million people are expected to quit their job in the next year. With a big chunk of the workforce looking to leave their current jobs, it’s more important than ever that employers prioritise retaining the staff they already have.
The Great Resignation has put more pressure on employers when it comes to retaining talent. Having a good employee retention strategy in place ensures that you don’t end up paying huge amounts of money replacing your previous employees. It also means that your staff feel valued and happy to work for you.
This article explores how an employer can avoid losing staff whilst retaining talent that continues to deliver results to your business.
Make employee engagement a key part of your retention strategy
Employee engagement is important for ensuring that employees feel valued and respected. Making time outside of work to build and develop relationships with your employees enables them to be more connected with your business, thus increasing productivity.
It’s also important when prioritising employee engagement that you recognise and value your talent, which is crucial for having a good company culture. This can be done by sharing an employee’s achievements with their fellow team members or assigning them tasks with more responsibility and autonomy.
As an employer, you should also evaluate employee engagement to find out if there are areas within the business that need improvement. By doing this through individual updates with employees or analysing job satisfaction rates, it’ll allow you to see if changes need to be made with employee engagement.
Enable employees to have a good work/life balance
Employers who have a company culture of overwork and burnout are guaranteed to lose talent. If a few employees go above and beyond to help get projects done and you don’t value them, they’ll look to leave your company immediately.
You should make sure as an employer that employee workloads and demands are not unrestrictive for a good work/life balance. If employees become overworked or their health deteriorates, productivity will decline and they are more likely to be absent from work.
By providing a good work/life balance to employees, it’ll reduce the risk of burnout, while also improving productivity and increasing employee morale.
Give regular feedback
Feedback is a key component when it comes to not just attracting and retaining talent, but also ensuring that an employer doesn't lose them. Employees simply want to know if they’ve performed or underperformed with the work they’re producing to you so that they become better workers.
Providing regular feedback to your team will enable you to see how much value they’re giving to your business. Feedback can be shared through various platforms, whether that’s with an in-person meeting or remotely through Zoom or Microsoft Teams calls.
When providing feedback, you should communicate it with your employees on various projects regularly. By doing this, it means that you can see if employees are delivering or requiring improvement on a particular project that you’re working on.
Provide learning and development opportunities for employees
Learning and development opportunities are not only important for employers, they’re essential for employees. If you don’t want to lose talented employees, then it’s key that you provide them with the resources and opportunities for continuous learning and development in your company.
The City & Guilds Skills Index 2021 found that 30% of UK workers have said that they’ve not received any formal workplace training in the last five years. Employers should be collaborating with learning and development teams to implement ways that employees can continually improve in their jobs.
By implementing a culture of continuous improvement in your business, employees feel as if they’re improving in their roles on a regular basis.
Conclusion
Employers can stem the loss of top talent in their businesses by utilising these tips we’ve listed in this article. By providing your talent with the resources they need to do their jobs well, it’ll ensure that they feel comfortable working for you and you avoid losing employees to your competitors.
Want to learn more about attracting top talent? We have a guide that covers how employers can attract the best talent to your business.