Increasing Employee Retention While Also Helping Them Thrive

As an HR professional, you want your business to succeed. One major key to this is employee retention because you invest time and money into recruitment and the less time and money you spend recruiting, the more you can dedicate to your business and your employees’ success. Helping your employees advance through relationship building, new opportunities, recognition, and appreciation can help you keep your employees while making them feel valued. Five ways to increase employee retention include:

1. Help Your Employees Build Relationships: Coworkers don’t have to be best friends, but matching up employees with a mentor or just another teammate can help them learn how to build relationships that will be important in their future endeavors. Most jobs require working together with others, so knowing how to network and interact with others is critical. The common question HR professionals have is “How do you show appreciation to colleagues?” Of course, a simple “nice work” email or in-person conversation is useful, but there are many other ways to do this, too.
   
   Another way is to encourage your employees to give each other recognition during meetings. Giving each other “shout outs” can help employees bond as well as learn what each person’s strong suits are. For example, if one employee is good at Microsoft Excel, getting public recognition for that will let other employees know who they can rely on if they need help with Microsoft Excel. This builds trust, which is a foundation of being able to work together.
   
   Also, with Assembly’s technology, your team can provide one another with encouragement that can help your business thrive.
2. Show Employees You Want Them to Advance Their Careers: Employees don’t want to feel “stuck” in their job and like they have “nowhere to go.” Employees who feel like this are not inclined to stay and may look for another company that provides employees with new opportunities.
   
   Allowing “shadowing” and encouraging classes and conferences enables employees to learn new skills that can help them join a different sector. You can encourage your employees to experience other sectors and jobs within your company that they may decide they want to transfer to.
   
   Promoting and hiring from within can also benefit you, as employees already know your company’s business processes, culture, and people, which can save you a lot of money by eliminating the need for extensive training and initiation.
3. Let Your Employees Know They are Valued: Most people like to feel needed and the sense that the work they do is important, so employee appreciation is something all HR professionals should think about.
   
   Appreciating your employees can help them feel valued, and when they feel valued, they are more likely to work hard to earn promotions and chances to advance professionally.
   
   Take some time to think critically and answer the question “What does employee appreciation mean to you?” before devising a plan to show your employees that you care and are appreciative of what they do for your business every day.
4. Provide Incentives that Will Keep Them Coming Back to Work: Incentives don’t always have to equate to money, so what is the difference between reward and recognition and what are some good incentives for employees? Recognizing employees for their efforts is much different than rewarding them with financial bonuses, although that helps, too.
   
   Good incentives include benefits such as decent insurance and paid time off because they boost morale and promote your employees’ well-being. If the budget allows it, hosting things like catered lunches, dinners out, or office parties with door prizes can create a fun environment and help your employees relax.
5. Create an Excellent Corporate Culture: Overall, HR leaders should always be looking for ways to improve their business’s culture so that employees will remain happy and enjoy their jobs. It's well known and researched that “toxic” company culture can have very detrimental consequences, so actually sitting down and formulating a plan to encourage teamwork and advancement is worth the time it takes. 

About the Author: Kimberly Hurley
Kimberly works as a corporate consultant during the day and spends free time researching and writing about an extremely widespread of topics spanning from Human Resources to sports, medical topics, and vacation destinations. She believes that solid communication is key to success and positive interpersonal relationships create happiness and employee retention.