A significant expense many employers fail to recognize is turnover costs. Being unable to retain employees can cut into your bottom line in several ways, such as lost productivity, recruiting costs and onboarding. Creating a positive work environment that prioritizes employee growth, health and well-being can help keep your employees satisfied in their roles. However, there’s a lot that goes into improving employee retention and lowering turnover costs. In this guide, we’ll walk through how to improve employee retention and motivation through various hiring strategies. Use this guide to improve employee retention today.
Create a Positive Work Culture and Environment
One of the top strategies to improve employee retention is creating a positive work culture and environment. Toxic workplace environments can make employees feel unsafe, causing them to find new jobs elsewhere. By implementing strategies to create a welcoming work environment, you can make your team feel connected, respected and engaged, leading to increased job satisfaction and retention.
So, how can you create a positive work culture? Below are a few tips you can start implementing:
- Promote a healthy work-life balance: Employees don’t want to feel tied to their jobs. One of the best ways to keep employees motivated is by offering flexible working hours, remote work opportunities and supportive policies that allow them to balance their personal lives with their careers.
- Implement health and wellness programs: Offering wellness programs or similar initiatives that support employees’ physical and mental well-being through gym memberships or counseling services can help them feel their best and stay dedicated to their roles.
- Create an inclusive culture: Focusing on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives can create a work environment that values diversity and inclusion, allowing all employees to feel respected regardless of their background or identity.
Provide Growth and Development Opportunities to Improve Employee Retention
Another strategy on how to improve employee retention and motivation is providing growth and development opportunities to help employees progress through their careers. By offering growth opportunities, employees will understand the paths they can take within the organization to reach the next level, keeping them motivated and committed to your company.
From professional development programs to training and courses, there are numerous ways you can build employees up and help them feel their skills are being cultivated. Other examples of growth and development opportunities include creating individual development plans (IDPs) for employees that focus on their career aspirations and strengths, implementing mentorship and coaching programs, and offering internal programs whenever possible to show that employee growth is achievable within the organization.
Recognize and Reward Employees
To improve employee retention, implementing a recognition and rewards system can help show appreciation for employees’ accomplishments, making them feel valued in their roles. There are various ways to recognize and reward employees, such as:
- Be specific and timely: When an employee reaches a goal or accomplishes something, recognizing that accomplishment in a timely manner and being specific helps them understand the value of their contributions.
- Offer incentives and rewards: For significant accomplishments, create an incentive or reward program with gift cards, bonuses, extra PTO or other incentives to acknowledge their exceptional performance.
- Provide public recognition: Providing recognition during team meetings, companywide announcements or newsletters motivates the employee and their peers.
- Create a peer recognition system: You might not interact with every employee and see their accomplishments during your day-to-day operations. Creating a peer recognition system where employees can nominate and appreciate their coworkers’ accomplishments can promote a culture of support and collaboration.
Improve Communication and Feedback Channels
An important tip on how to improve employee retention and motivation is improving your communication and feedback channels. Improving communication channels is essential for creating a transparent work environment that promotes collaboration and teamwork. To improve your communication and feedback channels, consider these strategies:
- Host regular team meetings: Team meetings, whether weekly, biweekly or monthly, allows team members to discuss goals, roadblocks and progress, offering all employees the ability to share updates and receive feedback.
- Conduct employee surveys: Employee surveys allow employees to provide feedback anonymously on various aspects of the company, such as leadership, company culture and work environment. Employers can use survey results to identify areas for improvement and create action plans.
- One-on-one meetings: It can be easy for employees to feel unseen by higher-ups. Hosting one-on-one meetings with direct reports allows managers to connect and provide a space for employees to provide feedback, concerns and career aspirations.
These are just some ways employers can improve communication channels within their organizations. Other strategies include implementing a feedback and suggestion box, investing in communication tools that facilitate collaboration and ensuring transparent communication from leadership.
Conduct Exit Interviews and Stay Interviews
While the goal is to retain all your employees, it’s not always possible or realistic. However, you can use opportunities of losing an employee to improve employee retention by conducting exit and stay interviews. Through exit interviews with departing employees, you can better understand their reasons for leaving. Through these interviews, you can identify any patterns or issues contributing to turnover and use that information to make future improvements.
Implement Effective Onboarding Programs
Investing in a robust onboarding program that helps employees acclimate to their company culture and roles more quickly is an effective strategy for improving employee retention. With a smooth onboarding experience, you can set a good first impression and increase the likelihood of new talent staying with the organization long term.
To create an effective onboarding program, it’s important to adequately prepare by ensuring all necessary tools and equipment are available, and their workspaces are organized to get them started on their first day. Additionally, hosting a welcome event and introductions with other members of the organization can help new hires familiarize themselves with their coworkers. It’s also important to have training and development programs in place and to inform new hires about company policies, procedures and expectations.
Champion Transparency and Accuracy for Employee Payroll Information
It’s crucial to build trust to improve employee retention. One way to do so is by ensuring payroll information is transparent and accurate, giving employees peace of mind that they are compensated fairly and correctly. Clearly communicating payroll policies and training payroll staff are some strategies to increase transparency and accuracy. Another key strategy is investing in a partner to help manage your pay statements.
Experian Employer Services allows employers to create custom pay statements to meet company and state requirements. With customized pay statements, employers can create more personalized and transparent pay slips for employees, allowing them to clearly see their wages, deductions and other relevant information. Employees can also quickly access their pay information through an online portal that can be pulled up on their computer, tablet or mobile device.
Increase HR Efficiency to Improve Employee Retention With Experian Employer Services
Experian Employer Services makes it easy for employers to streamline workforce management and improve the employee life cycle. Our services, such as I-9 administration, ACA reporting, unemployment management and payroll tax services, are great ways to boost your bottom line, increase employee satisfaction and improve employee retention. Explore our solutions today to see how your HR and payroll departments can become more efficient.