As a small business owner, you fully realize that a healthy, happy, robust workforce is crucial to employee retention which in turn is crucial to productivity. You also realize that the quality of your workforce is crucial to your company’s success. There are many strategies that a small business can use to increase employee retention rates. Below are ten strategies:
- VALUE THE SKILLS AND TALENTS OF ALL YOUR WORKERS
You should never hire or retain an employee whose skills and talents you do not value. Your employees want to feel valued. This is the ultimate thing: VALUE. When an employee feels valued, they are more likely to stay with the company than when they feel that their bosses treat them like garbage or when their bosses fail to show appreciation for their skills and talents. Most people are better at something than others around them. Everyone has different talents. As a small business owner, it is important not to treat all your employees like a monolith or take for granted the skills of individual employees. Let each employee know that you value what they can do, and what they bring to the company. It could be as simple as complimenting the intern for “making the best coffee” you have ever tasted or gushing about a PowerPoint presentation.
- OFFER YOUR EMPLOYEES A GOOD BENEFITS PACKAGE
Employees want to have a good benefits package from their company, and many make decisions about their jobs based on this aspect alone. Workers are more likely to accept a job, if the job offers a great benefits package and they are also likely to stay with a company if they remain happy with their job and the benefits the job offers. So, if you want to retain your employees, give them a great benefits package.
- TAKE MENTAL HEALTH SERIOUSLY
Another way to retain employees is to encourage work/life balance. This is old news really, but it is amazing how some company executives fail to take this seriously. Sure, the workplace is serious business and not a mental health incubator and people are there to get work done. But to the extent that bosses understand people’s mental health are equally as important to their overall well-being and productivity as their physical health—and the fact that both mental health and physical health impact their job performance—the better off everyone will be, and surely the more likely the boss will be able to retain his/her employees in the long run.
- RESPECT YOUR WORKER’S TIME
Everyone’s time matters and it is very important that bosses respect the time of their employees. Your workers cannot, for example, spend every waking hour on work-related matters because they have lives outside of work. Don’t send work emails at inappropriate times of the day or night because it causes stress. Don’t ask your workers to come in at off hours and then haggle with them about overtime pay or forget to show up and things like that. Also, give your workers ample time to complete projects. Do not be unreasonable about the amount of time you expect certain tasks to be done if you know that the work cannot reasonably be completed in that time frame.
- ACKNOWLEDGE THEIR CONTRIBUTION TO THE COMPANY’S SUCCESS
Everyone loves praise and acknowledgement. To the extent that a boss is profuse with appreciation, acknowledgement and public as well as private praise for their workers’ contributions to the company’s success, the happier their employees are going to be. It does not hurt to put your money where your mouth is sometimes with a bonus or other extra perks to show your appreciation to your employees. It does not have to be anything elaborate. Sometimes, just a couple of tickets to the theatre would be nice.
- HELP YOUR EMPLOYEES TO IMPROVE THEIR SKILLS WITH TRAINING COURSES
Many employees like to keep learning and they appreciate companies that assist them with the cost of professional training workshop and training courses. Companies that offer these courses, or that pay for these courses, are likely to have higher retention rates.
- DISCOURAGE TOXIC WORKPLACE BEHAVIOR IN ALL EMPLOYEES
Discourage toxic workplace behavior. This issue can blindside many bosses. The boss is often the last one to find out what is really going on with the underlings sometimes. TV’s Ellen DeGeneres is a perfect example of this. She had a toxic workplace, but she had no idea. She was the last to find out that people on her team were routinely making other people feel bad. This eventually led to the popular TV host retiring from her show just one year after it was publicly disclosed that behind the scenes was a festering and toxic work environment. To the extent that bosses actively discourage toxicity in the workplace, the more likely their workers will be to want to work there. This obviously means that retention rates will correspondingly be quite high.
- SHOW COMPASSION
This goes to the issue of mental health and work/life balance that has been mentioned above. But the whole idea is that your employees are just human beings with personal lives that can impact their work lives and sometimes, there are things going on that they may or may not be comfortable with talking about, that can have an impact on their emotional stability at work. It is okay for the boss to show their workers that the workers mean more than their output. It is okay to show compassion to your employees when it is needed. The employees are more likely to feel that they are part of a “family” and are therefore more likely to stay longer with the company.