How to Reduce Your Employee Turnover Rates: Part Two

Harness Internal Employment

Your employees may feel like they’re restricted by their current role, especially if they’ve been in the same position for a long time. Some people are quite happy to find their place and stay where they are, but others are more ambitious.

It’s not enough to simply offer these people a pay-rise or a bonus; money does talk, but for some it’s more about the position itself rather than the pay. If your staff see your business hiring for roles that could be filled internally, then they might start to feel rightfully disgruntled.

Don’t let your best employees outgrow your business. Offer opportunities for your staff to grow within your company and encourage them to apply for vacancies within your organisation.

Provide Training and Education

Investing in employees may seem like a gamble, as putting time and money into staff members who may just up and leave could feel like a waste.

However, having this attitude towards your employees is an unhealthy one; not only does it instill a distinct lack of trust, but it also means that your business could be missing out on the many benefits involved.

Focusing on how your business could improve from the present, rather than what it could lose in the future, is equally as important as preventing employee turnover.

Providing your staff members with the opportunity to improve themselves as workers and as people, not only shows your employees that you care about their personal growth, but also provides your business with a more competent workforce.

Provide your employees with training days, invite them to seminars or events, or encourage them to undergo additional training programmes.

Give Them a Sense of Purpose

Some people in your employ may view their job as being a means to an end; whether that’s supporting their family or to save up for a new mortgage. But for others, if they feel like their career isn’t fulfilling, then they may decide to look elsewhere for a more satisfying role.

Something that businesses too often fail to realise, is that for most, having a sense of purpose and importance is a vital part of their careers.

Obviously, some jobs and industries provide more opportunity for purpose than others, but in this case, businesses should be implementing ways to provide opportunity themselves. This can be done by making employees feel like they’re actions are genuinely making a difference.

Provide examples of where an employee’s actions have had a positive effect; such as introducing someone to a client or making a customer’s day better. Or even take this a step further by creating events to put your employees in the lime-light such as a mini awards ceremony.

Recognise the Importance of Camaraderie

The importance of in-office friendships and a positive work environment cannot be stressed enough. For some business owners, productivity comes before encouraging good working relationships, after all, not everyone can be friends.

However, this kind of attitude may be a serious issue for some employees. Being able to interact with other people could be a major reason as to why some may even have a job; one study reported that 70% of respondents identified their colleagues as being the best thing about work.

Create an environment wherein people are comfortable with engaging with each other. Do this by encouraging opportunities for teamwork or employee collaboration, promote co-operation over competition, and discourage toxic behaviour.

Additionally, your business could organise or encourage social events such as work dinners, or trips out. Even just implementing small opportunities for people to express their appreciation for each other; for example, here at Redsquid, we give everyone a birthday card signed by the entire office.

Make Employees Feel Valued

Staff can feel decidedly undervalued or used if they’re never given any appreciation of good work. This can lead to complacency, disinterest, and potentially, a desire to look elsewhere for positive reinforcement.

The most obvious way to avoid this is to give your employees more recognition. Your business can go about doing this in a number of different ways, but the most important thing to remember is frequency.

To ensure that regular recognition is given, develop a culture of praise; encourage your managers and leaders to report employee achievements and acknowledge them. Implement this culture from the top-down; starting with the higher ups, encouraging them to recognise good work from their team members.

One great method of positive reinforcement, is to introduce a scheme designed to reward those employees who have been going the extra mile; for example, you could provide a recognition of the quarter award for employees who have been recommended by their peers.

Even small simple actions can make an employee feel valued; such as emails of thanks from managers, unexpected gifts, or office-wide acknowledgement of achievements.

Conduct Exit Interviews

Unfortunately, sometimes no matter what you do, an employee will decide to leave. The best approach to this situation is to take what you can from it, as even employee departures can offer their own benefits to a business. Take the opportunity to learn what you can, and apply that knowledge, so that hopefully, you can prevent more employees from departing in the future.

You can do this by conducting exit interviews with all your departing staff members: sit them down and ask them about their experience with working for your business. What did they like about it? What benefits do they enjoy? What didn’t they like about it?

Getting a greater understanding as to where your business might have gone wrong, will help you make it right.

There are ways to go about improving your employees’ working experience. These don’t even need to be massive changes; the smallest things can make the biggest difference to some people. But applying at least some of the approaches listed above, could significantly reduce your business’s employee turnover, and make your company a much better place to work.