9 Ways to Reduce Employee Turnover
There can be a lot of factors as to why people resign or separate from their place of work. Some common reasons would include a lack of work-life balance, unsatisfactory pay, burnout, or poor management. Reducing the rate of employee turnover is an important HR role as it keeps the company from losing manpower and compromising daily productivity. During HR planning, take a look at the reasons why your former employees have left, and check on the current weaknesses of your company to determine exactly how you can reduce it. If you don’t know where to start, here are nine ways you can reduce employee turnover in your company.
9 Ways to Reduce Employee Turnover
Hire the Right People
When you are hiring for a new job opening, be thorough with your applicants during the job interview. Ask them how long they intend to stay or ask what would keep them in a company for a long time. Depending on their answers, you can determine whether they are going to be a short term employee or someone you can keep for long. As a hiring tip, you can also pay attention to the applicant’s behavior in the selection process and figure out what kind of employee they are going to be through their interactions with you as well as the staff.
Offer Flexible Work Balance
Sometimes the reason for the low rate of employee retention is the fact that some of the people cannot handle the schedule of their work. Some people just aren’t a morning person or a night person. Flexible work balance is when an employee is not restricted to a strict schedule, instead they can start and end their work whenever they want so long as they render the mandated work hours in a day. Have your company offer this option to your employees so that they can work when they feel they are at their best whatever time of day that is.
Offer Feedback and Praise Efforts
Most people work not only for money but for a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment. So one way to reduce the rate of employee turnover is to make them feel appreciated and valued for the work they’ve done. There are many ways you can offer positive feedback and praise your employees. Take the time to give them a pat in the back during the performance review meeting, or organize an employee engagement activity. You may reward them with food or non cash rewards when their performance has been excellent. This will make your employees not want to leave the company if they know that their efforts get rewarded this way.
Recognize and Reward Employees
Employee recognition programs are a great way to maintain employee retention. Rewarding employees for going above and beyond their job encourages employees to do their best and care more about their output at work. Giving the best kind of incentives as well can increase an employee’s satisfaction with their job. Ways you can reward employees include providing extra cash if they maintain a certain level of productivity, or even giving them a benefit like an extra paid leave or a ticket to a movie.
Involve Employees in Decision Making
Giving employees a say when it comes to making decisions about their work is also a great way to reduce employee turnover. Because when you give employees some control over their work, they get to do their job in a satisfactory way. Allowing the employees to participate also lets them share what they know to their other coworkers and the management which can help improve the workflow of their jobs and make it easier for everyone. And when people’s jobs are easier that gives them a reason not to separate from the company. Considering they are the ones who are doing the work itself it can give a lot of insights into making a decision in performance management.
Provide Opportunities for Development and Growth
Another factor that would cause an employee to leave their employer is because the work is stagnant. When the work becomes routine, employees will feel stuck. There are even instances where the opportunity to learn and grow is one of the main reasons somebody works in a certain company, seeing it as a stepping stone for their career. Providing opportunities to develop their full potential professionally encourages employees to stay within the company. Some of the ways you can do this include, implementing mentorship programs, or training and development plans.
Create Training and Development Programs
When you implement training and development programs the benefits include improving your employees and helping them grow in skill. As mentioned before, some of your employee’s reasons for joining your company is to gain experience and learn skills aligned with their career. Provide the right one and this will make them want to stay in the company longer to see how far they can grow professionally. To find out which training and development program works great for your employees, ask for their feedback through surveys and evaluations in order to see if it was effective.
Maintain Constant Communication
While it is good to encourage them to reach out to you for any issues at work, it is also a great gesture to be the one reaching out to employees first. Form a two way communication system, by checking up on them and see how they’re doing at work. If you notice any dissatisfaction or something negative from an employee, have a meeting with them and discuss what the issue is. Doing this with the employee shows that you care about their well being at work and can help maintain positive employee relations as well as reduce employee turnover.
Prioritize Employee Happiness
A happy employee makes a happy company. As long as an employee is satisfied with their work and the pay they are given, they have no reason to leave the company. Whatever methods you take to reduce the rate of employee turnover, you can never go wrong as long as they are all in the interest of keeping the employees happy. Other simple ways you can make your employees happy is by creating a positive working environment for them to work in everyday. A happy space will certainly keep employees from wanting to leave.
It is an unfortunate fact that one day, employees will leave the company. There are a lot of reasons for this, but what you can do is make them want to stay longer. And as long as you follow the above mentioned methods, then you’ll get to keep some of your best employees around for a very long time.
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