Finding and hiring the right people is hard enough, but keeping them is a whole different challenge. As nice as it would be for turnover to be a minor issue, reality isn’t so sweet. From large corporations to small businesses, the Great Resignation is hitting employers hard.

The 2019 Retention Report by Work Institute reveals that 35% of workers might leave their jobs every year by 2023. Data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics show that 4.3 million Americans quit their jobs in August 2021. Meanwhile, an SHRM survey says that employee retention was a major concern for 47% of HR managers.

Why are your employees leaving?

Exit interviews provide you with valuable insight into their perspectives. These help you determine whether your retention strategies are working or not. Likely, you’ll hear the following reasons as to why your workers are leaving their jobs:

• Feeling unsupported or overworked by their superiors
• Lack of appreciation or recognition from their peers
• Unhappiness with the management
• Dissatisfaction with the work environment or company culture
• Inadequate employee benefits or take-home pay
• Limited opportunities for career advancement
• Need for better balance between their personal and work lives
• Experience of boredom or disengagement
• Concerns about the financial health and direction of the company
• More appealing offers from other companies

How can you make employees stay?

While some job markets favour employers, skilled candidates won’t have to wait long to find new opportunities after they leave your company. Many businesses continued to hire over the pandemic and some are even growing in their staffing capacity.

If you don’t want to risk losing your top talent to your competitors, take the appropriate measures for employee retention. Here are 7 areas where deliberate action boosts employee satisfaction and engagement:

Improving work-life balance

Make sure that your employees aren’t feeling suffocated by your workplace. Remember that people work to live and not live to work. Ask your workers for input regarding their schedules, including vacation times. Settle on schedules that allow every member of your team to enjoy their personal lives.

When your employees are working remotely, consider on-call scheduling. This is where they are ‘on call’ until certain times and, if they haven’t received a message by then, they are able to do what they want. With this flexibility, they have more free time and lower levels of dissatisfaction.

Appreciating good work

As you may have noticed, saying please and thank you does wonders for a person’s attitude towards you. In the same manner, speaking honest and meaningful words to your employees contributes to their sense of achievement, their morale, and their pride in their work.

This is not to say that you should be praising them every hour of every day. Rather, as a manager, ensure that you give credit where credit is due. Whether they’ve closed deals, increased website traffic, or organised your files for you, let them know you appreciate their work.

Eliminating toxic traits

Negativity and bad attitudes spread through the workplace quickly. These usually start from one or two individuals and need to be cut at the root. Although everyone deserves a chance, they mustn’t be allowed to bring the entire team down with them.

Take their personal situations into account and see where you may be of assistance to them. Should the toxicity continue to flow, realise that they aren’t a good fit for the company culture you’re building. Let them go for the sake of your other workers.

Keeping your promises

If you keep disappointing your team by failing to keep your promises, it’s no surprise that they decide to jump ship. It may be that you’ve said the company will provide them with certain tools, equipment, leave credits, or scheduling freedoms, see to it that these are being kept.

Keep communication lines open with your employees regarding these promises. In this way, you will be able to work out solutions or alternatives together in the event that things go wrong and you’re unable to keep your original promises to them.

Promoting from within

There are many advantages to internal promotions, including being familiar with the company culture, the people, the expectations, the work environment, the systems, the processes, the operations, and more. The manager also already knows the employee thereby reducing the time and resources needed for training.

As they are given opportunities for advancement, they don’t have to search elsewhere to move up the career ladder or to transition to leadership roles. Make it a point to provide special benefits to those who are moving up the ranks to make your offers appealing.

Providing healthy environments

With a remote team, it’s harder for you to track the physical health of your members but it’s still possible to provide a healthy working environment for them. Start by being in touch with them regularly, be it through weekly progress meetings or random chat conversations.

Maintain an open door policy too, meaning that you are transparent with them and approachable to them. Make it easy for them to contact you should they encounter an issue with their work. Support them whenever there are changes in the processes or operations so it’s easier for them to adjust.

Pushing for mentorship

Even in highly technical industries, the range of experience, skills, and ages vary greatly in each unique company around the world. There are going to be workers who have been in the field for years and others who are coming fresh out of college to join the workforce.

Encourage your long-standing employees to take newer employees under their wings and teach them the tricks of the trade. Partnering them up for training fosters an atmosphere of camaraderie while giving recognition to seasoned workers for their knowledge and achievements.

Refining onboarding processes

You don’t want to waste your time in recruiting a new hire only to have them resign within the first three months. Since they were hired, they passed your standards and checked out with a range of people during their interview process.

Minimise the chances of losing a new employee by improving your onboarding process. Focus more on helping them settle in rather than on filling out paperwork. Review the handbook with them, explain the regulations, ask if they have any questions, and so on.

Where to find employees who stay

When you’re looking for top talents who are more likely to stay with your company, don’t limit yourself to candidates within your local area. You’ll find that there are plenty of remote candidates who possess the skills, knowledge, and experience required for the role you have open.

Simplify the recruitment process for virtual professionals with our help at Remote Workmate. Our talent pool consists mainly of online workers from the Philippines so you are sure to find someone who is going to be a great fit for your unique company.