Your staff can often be your best asset. A team that is engaged, productive, and strong will help make your business more profitable. On the flipside, having to constantly hire and retrain new employees is expensive.
Successful businesses know how to manage – and keep – good staff. They recognise that good talent is a real asset.
And since the global pandemic saw many staff stood down, or people moving jobs in what’s been dubbed “The Great Resignation”, it’s even more important than ever for businesses to try and keep their best employees.
Benefits of retaining your best staff long-term
The main reasons you might want to prioritise ways to keep your best staff include:
- It increases productivity and keeps you competitive in your market – good employees with experience will be more productive, plus instead of spending time looking for and training new employees, managers and supervisors can focus on helping employees be more productive. Retaining your best employees also helps you remain competitive and agile in a fast-paced, rapidly evolving marketplace.
- It improves employee morale - employee retention strategies are designed to increase employee happiness and job satisfaction. Employees who feel happy at work are often more willing to work toward the company's mission and contribute to a positive work environment.
- It is more cost-effective - hiring and training new employees is often more expensive than offering development opportunities to current employees. Consider offering current employees an educational stipend to advance their skills, on-site training, conference options or promotions and/or extra benefits or perks.
- It is good for customer service – a happy and engaged team will naturally be in a position to give better customer service and be invested in making customers happy.
- It is just more fun – yep, that’s right, having a good team that sticks together, works hard, encourages each other, and works towards a common business goal is much nicer than constantly having people come and go, never really getting to know each other or knowing how long people will be around.
Create a positive team environment from within and see your customers happy too.
Strategies for retaining your best staff
- Start at the beginning
Ensure you have a great onboarding process that welcomes staff from day one (or even before) and then continues to train and resource staff appropriately.
- Regularly communicate the company vision for the future
Get staff on-board with the goals for the business and how they can play a part in achieving common goals.
- Foster positive work relationships and encourage communication
Create an open culture where staff can feel safe to speak up, communicate their thoughts, and feel there is a team environment.
- Keep remote employees and on-site teams engaged
Be careful not to favour one team over another and utilise technology like videoconferencing instead of phone conferencing to help employees in multiple locations feel like part of the team.
- Ensure staff are in the right role for them and give them consistent training
Hire the right people in the first place (invest in recruitment and training processes) and don’t be afraid to offer career development opportunities to allow staff to move side-ways or upwards if they show talent for other roles.
- Ask your team what they need
While all of these strategies are proven to help with employee engagement and retention, one of the best ways to keep your team happy, is to ask them!
You can set up an employee engagement survey which allows staff to confidentially respond and have a say to how they see their role, how they interact with management, and if they have any suggestions for improvements.
- Adopt a social recognition system to recognise employees
Don’t leave it just for the yearly review. For employees to feel as though the work they do matters, employees need to be recognised in real-time for their efforts.
Both private and public recognition will help them feel valued and encourage others to work hard for the same credit.
The future of work
There’s no doubt that the global pandemic has changed how we work, where we work, and how we communicate. While every organisation has to do what’s right for them, most can agree that the past few years has transformed how we conduct business in our digital age.
The Great Resignation we’ve been seeing in recent times, and the staff shortages in many industries, shows just how important it is to retain your best talent.
Keeping employees happy, and therefore building a productive business, is crucial as staff can move around more freely than ever.
If you need help building a profitable and productive business, please speak to our team here.
Profacc Accountants can help you manage your business accounts as well as your personal wealth.