With organisations in Northern Ireland struggling to fill skills gaps, employers are increasingly exploring how they can attract and retain talent. While many focus on the acquisition of new team members, employee retention should also be a key focus, allowing employers to keep their most skilled employees and ensure the smooth running of operations while cutting down on the costs of hiring new staff.
With staff retention such an important aspect of organisational success, this article outlines how to retain staff, with some of the best ways to keep your best workers happy and motivated so they don’t add to your staff turnover.
Why employee retention should be a focus for employers
While employee retention should always be a priority for organisations, it often requires considerable time, effort, and resources. Let’s take a look at some of the reasons why it’s important for employers to prioritise long-term retention.
1. The costs of staff turnover: Replacing departing staff can become expensive. From processing the resignation of the leaving staff member to hiring recruiters or paying for job ads to find a replacement, covering the empty position while the candidate is sourced, and inducting the new hire once they are onboard, costs can quickly mount.
2. Staff turnover can snowball: If staff start leaving, this can create a snowball effect and lead to high turnover rates. That’s because as staff departs, more work and responsibilities fall onto the shoulders of the remaining workers. This in turn can increase levels of work-related stress, potentially leading them to look for other opportunities where they have a fairer workload – and on it goes.
3. Competition for talent: Sourcing and onboarding top candidates can be a difficult task, especially with other organisations looking to do the same. With Ireland facing ongoing challenges when it comes to sourcing talent to fill skills gaps, an organisation that already has the skilled workers it needs in place should see holding on to them as a key priority.
4. Keep things running smoothly: Staff who are settled in and experienced in their roles contribute to smooth and productive work environments, and the institutional knowledge built up by long-standing members of the workforce cannot be quickly or easily replaced. Furthermore, good working and personal relationships between colleagues can also take years to form.
10 employee retention strategies
The importance of holding on to your employees is clear – but how can you retain your employees in the face of competition from other employers? Here are 10 employee retention tactics to consider.
1. Hire the right people
It might seem obvious, but giving an open role to the right candidate in the first place is fundamental to any employee retention strategy. Hiring is a costly exercise, and a bad hire can unsettle the team they join, reduce productivity, and be a drain on financial resources. Ultimately, a bad hire will either leave of their own accord, or your organisation will move them on, and they will then need to be replaced.
By implementing a robust hiring process, you can ensure you’re only bringing in candidates with the right skills who also align with your organisational culture and values. Employers can utilise competency-based interviews to make sure candidates have the right skills to succeed and ensure job advertisements reflect the role accurately so new hires aren’t caught unawares when they start.
2. Optimise onboarding
One of the best practices to retain employees is to make sure the for new hires goes smoothly. Getting new hires off to a good start can have a huge impact on their opinion of an organisation, and it can mean the difference between them settling in for the long haul, or keeping their CV up-to-date in case they spot another opportunity.
Good onboarding processes familiarise new hires with the culture, values, policies, and procedures of your organisation, so they can settle in and start getting productive quickly. You might consider assigning them a mentor, in a formal or less formal capacity, to guide them through their first weeks. Where possible, be sure to gather feedback from new hires on the onboarding process so it can be continually improved.
3. Prioritise engagement
Happy and productive employees are engaged employees. This means they feel valued and respected within an organisation, and they believe the work they do is having a real impact and they are a key part of the organisations success. HR professionals can create an environment where employees feel engaged by giving them opportunities to participate in decision-making, share their feedback and opinions on how things should be done, and collaborate with leadership.
4. Promote a healthy work-life balance
Levels of burnout are likely to rise in the workplace, and this can have serious implications for staff turnover. To overcome this challenge, employers can support employees and help them avoid burnout by promoting a healthy work-life balance.
One way to provide this balance is to offer flexible working, which can include things like opportunities to work from home and flexible hours. A more flexible schedule can give employees the ability to live their lives while getting their work done in the way that works best for them.
Other ideas include encouraging staff to take regular holidays and breaks to ensure they are refreshed and ready to go when they are at work and getting management to lead by example by taking sufficient breaks.
5. Demonstrate a commitment to well-being
While work-life balance can go a long way to keeping staff motivated and rested, there are many other ways that employers can enhance the employee experience and demonstrate their commitment to well-being.
For example, employers can offer things like fitness classes and healthy meals in the office, or even mental health support through apps or appointments with trained counsellors. All of this can go a long way to keeping employees healthy and happy, and ensuring they feel comfortable seeking help for personal and professional challenges if and when they need it.
6. Offer competitive compensation
If you’re struggling to work out how to improve employee retention at your organisation, one of the most obvious ways is to offer competitive compensation to new and existing employees. This is particularly true if compensation is a subject that comes up regularly in employee exit interviews.
To do this, employers can conduct salary benchmarking and salary reviews to make sure they have a compensation strategy that keeps them competitive in their industry and region. In an era where the rising cost of living is having an impact on large swathes of the working population, being fairly compensated is unsurprisingly near the top of most workers’ agenda.
7. Invest in development
Many workers want to feel they are developing professionally and personally at work, so employers need to provide opportunities for development. You could offer formal and informal training, while workshops can be used to develop multiple members of staff at the same time.
It’s also worth ensuring that mentoring opportunities are open to all mentors and mentees with appreciate this.
8. Reward and recognise success
Nobody likes their hard work to go unnoticed. One good strategy for boosting staff retention is to ensure your workplace has a culture where success is recognised, and rewarded. This can be done in a number of ways, including:
* Public praise for a successful project
* Monetary rewards for hitting or exceeding targets
* Other gifts and rewards for high performance
Ultimately, you want your employees to want to succeed, and to do this you need to create a culture of appreciation and acknowledgement.
9. Ensure transparent communication
In a time of economic turbulence, something workers appreciate is being kept up to date on developments in the workplace. Staff do not like being kept in the dark and having major changes communicated to them as a surprise, so establishing clear and frequent communication with the workforce about changes, goals, and expectations is vital.
Staff will often feel more engaged and involved if they can participate in open dialogue with management and have space to voice feedback, concerns, and questions they may have.
10. Support career advancement
According to Forbes, 63% of employees who quit their jobs in recent years did so primarily due to a perceived lack of advancement opportunities. That’s why a key employee retention tactic is to support career advancement within your organisation. Providing opportunities for professional growth through internal promotions, and careful succession planning, gives loyal staff more responsibility and reward as they grow.
Employee retention is a crucial factor in the success of any organisation, particularly in Northern Ireland’s competitive job market. By prioritising long-term retention strategies, employers can reduce turnover costs, maintain a skilled workforce, and encourage a productive and positive workplace environment. From hiring the right people and offering competitive compensation to promoting work-life balance and career advancement, businesses must implement thoughtful approaches to keep employees engaged and motivated. Ultimately, retaining top talent not only benefits employees but also strengthens organisational stability, ensuring long-term success in an evolving job landscape.