5 Ways to Reduce Staff Turnover
If you’ve spent a lot of time, energy and money in developing your team, then it’s vitally important that you provide your team with a good reason to stick around. Every time that an employee leaves your company, they’ll take with them all of the skills and experience they’ve developed. What’s more, you’ll have to spend more time inducting their replacements. Staff turnover can be contagious; as soon as one person takes the decision to leave, they send out the signal to the rest of the workforce that leaving is not only possible, but potentially desirable.
By minimizing staff turnover, you’ll minimize the cost and hassle associated with it. But how, exactly, can you do this? Let’s take a look at five methods.
Offer a path for development
Among the most popular reasons cited by employees who choose to switch workplaces is that they didn’t see a future in their current role. When staff can see that they’re going to be stuck in the same position forever, they start to look for alternatives. You can counter this by recruiting from within when leadership roles open up, and by offering leadership development services to those who want to progress into those roles. This strategy confers another benefit: your new leaders will go into the job with a strong understanding of the company and its structure.
Show appreciation
Single out an employee for praise when their performance merits it. If you can offer praise in front of other members of staff, or in a bulletin that everyone sees, then so much the better. Staff who feel appreciated are more likely to stay.
Stop Micromanaging
If you interfere in every aspect of work life, then you’ll send the message that you don’t trust your staff to do their work competently without your input. As well as discouraging your employees, you’ll also find yourself distracted from your own duties as a manager.
Encourage a healthy work-life balance
When employees feel that they can’t leave their workplace behind, they’ll become stressed. Eventually, they’ll quit. This is especially true in the age of working-from-home, as we all now understand the sort of balance it’s possible to strike between the office and home life. Talk to your employees about their working arrangements, and try to offer them a compromise that suits their needs.
Develop an employee-retention strategy
While all of these steps can help to address the symptoms of the problem, developing a strategy will help you to tackle the root causes, and help to avoid the circumstances that might result in a valued team-member leaving. You might devise your strategy, distil it into actionable steps that everyone can easily remember and take, and then regularly review to see what progress you’ve made.
