Most employees are not happy with their jobs. The most common reasons for this unhappiness include lack of opportunity, low wages, and a general sense that they don’t control their work. When employees feel like they’re at the mercy of circumstances beyond their control, they don’t find any meaning or satisfaction from their job.
What are Employee Retention Strategies?
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Employee retention strategies are plans and work practices an organization puts in place to follow for retaining its resourceful employees.
The retention strategies include succession plans, compensation, benefits, work policies, and processes that ensure the organization does not lose its employees.
Here are 14 best retention strategies to retain employees:
1. Make Yourself Accessible
Make yourself accessible to put people at ease. Being accessible implies that your team members can come to you with anything. As a manager, you always want hear from your team and keep them up to date with what’s happening in the organization. By staying accessible they’ll feel more comfortable coming into your office when they need something.
The happier staff are with their work environment and experience, the better for everyone.
2. Get to Know Your Employees Well
Having a positive working relationship with your employees makes the work much easier for everyone. To build good relationships with your employees, be open-minded about them and be curious about them. Try to know more about each member of your team on a personal basis.
When you learn a bit more about their challenges and interests, it will strengthen your relationship with them. Consequently, they will feel valued, and that will lead to higher morale in the workplace.
3. Avoid Causing Miscommunication
Effective communication is an essential skill for a manager because you are constantly communicating in your role. It’s necessary, but it becomes even more indispensable when you’re directly talking to your team members.
You speak with them all the time — whether giving instructions, updates, or talking about something during a meeting.
Therefore, whenever talking to your team members, be clear, accurate and make sure that they understand what you want to avoid miscommunication between you and everyone involved.
Read also: 50 Best Ways of Saying Great Job
4. Be Willing to Have a Dialogue with Your Employees
If a member of your team disagrees with something, do not silence that employee. Listen and ask questions about why they disagree and see if there are any problems or solutions.
It will open constructive dialogue and make it easier for you to identify issues and create the best solutions together with your team members.
Open dialogue breeds success but also creates an environment where everyone can benefit from their input.
5. Encourage your Employees to Speak Freely
Respectful disagreement is not only a right but an obligation in the open work environment. When a member of your team tries to voice an honest opinion, listen! This way, you can offer constructive feedback on the idea rather than shutting it down completely.
You should never reprimand any of your employees for respectfully voicing their opinion even if it goes against yours.
Preventing them from expressing their opinion creates resentment and discourages your team members from sharing their thoughts with you.
6. Trust Your Employees from the Start
You must trust and give every team member from the start the benefit of the doubt. And continue doing that until the employee no longer deserves your trust. When a manager wrongly refuses to trust team members to do their jobs, such distrust manifests itself in many negative ways.
Micromanaging or constantly checking and reviewing activity is an example of a manager who doesn’t trust people. Trust your employees instead of treating them like they are not reliable.
7. Project the Good Behaviors you Want to See
As a manager, you are a direct reflection of your company. And employees tend to resemble their managers. If you’re passionate about what you do and have the right attitude, your enthusiasm will rub off on your team.
When they see that you are committed to the job, they will follow suit and become very supportive. If you come to work on time, they will do the same.
So, project the behavior you want team members to emulate and be consistent with your actions. Your consistency will earn the respect of the team.
Read more: 16 Easy Steps to Becoming a Better Manager
8.Train and Develop Employees for Career Growth
To become a successful manager, you must ensure that all members of your team have the right skills and knowledge to perform their tasks to a high standard.
One way to build a high-performing team is by offering all employees access to training and development opportunities. Training gives them the competences they need to do their work, as well as developing new skills for their career progression.
9. Walk Around and Engage with Employees
Many managers get tempted to stay in their offices for most of the reading and replying to emails. It leads to poor decisions and a lack of engagement as they fail to see what’s going on in their organization.
Managers who spend more time walking around and talking with employees can make quicker decisions and avoid wasting time in unnecessary meetings.
Employees despise the terrible feeling that comes when attending a useless staff meeting where they listen for an hour or more to someone talking about things they can’t decide on or change.
10. Give Employees Opportunity to Grow
As a manager, it is your responsibility to make sure team members are happy and fulfilled. Employees want to grow their careers and feel like they have opportunities for advancement.
Recognize their desire to learn new skills and allow them to grow their careers. They will thank you for developing their skills, regardless of where they end up.
11. Involve your Employees in Decision-Making
For team members to become invested in your success, you need to allow them the opportunity to participate in decision-making processes. This not only boosts morale by making people believe that their opinions matter.
It also provides valuable experience for those who might be interested in learning more about aspects of work outside their scope of expertise. You also give them the opportunity to grow and learn more about making important decisions.
12. Explain Complex Decisions
As a manager, you make judgements every day that impact your team members. So, be transparent when you are making decisions especially those that will impact your staff. By doing so, it removes suspicions and deepens trust because employees understand the reasons behind your decisions.
It also removes any confusion or misunderstanding by clarifying things if there’re any concerns. Furthermore, it strengthens your relationship with your team.
Read: 9 Essential Core Working Competencies
13. Find Mentors for Your Employees
Mentoring is an excellent way for employees to develop skills and increase their success in the workplace. One way to mentor someone is to pair them with mentors or other senior leaders who can guide them to learn new skills and grow professionally.
Mentoring not only helps the employee but also provides an organization with new talent and increases the succession poll.
14. Pay your Employees Well
Avoid making unwritten rules of not paying your employees what they are worth. What you pay your employees reflects more on a manager than on the organization you work for. Good employees know the value of their work.
If you don’t meet their valuation, then you are not going to retain them. Even when your staff member is willing to work for less than their position and hard-work deserve, you should pay them what they deserve.
The employee may not mind working hard for less pay, but that will not speak well of how much you value them. So, if you don’t pay them in an honoring way or for what they deserve, they will eventually change jobs for more money or better pay.
Conclusion
How to retain the best employees is one of the most challenging things managers face all the time. Paying competitive wages can make some happy, but for others, this might not be enough. So, if you want to retain talented employees, you must do more than paying a good salary.
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