4 Employee Strategies to Retain Top Talent
Losing top talent employees can be detrimental to any organization. Large investments may have been made into an employee's training and future career within the company only to have them resign and go somewhere else. Talented workers who are making an organization profitable may decide one day out the blue to up and leave. Simply put, when an organization doesn’t engage and retain it’s top talent the consequences are major.
There is no cure all for employee turnover. No matter what actions are taken to retain employees, some of them are going to leave. But, organizations can take a proactive approach towards employee engagement and retention that go a long way.
One - Find out why people are leaving
Have you had more than one employee leave for the same reason? Is there any commonality amongst employees leaving the organization? Did they feel a lack of future opportunities? Did they feel treated unfairly? Is it simply money related?
The answers to these questions can be gotten through exit surveys and honest, open communication with employees.
Organizations can’t just sit back and use ext surveys to find out why employees are leaving. If you do that, you’ll lose far too much talent before you isolate the problems. Exit surveys are a vital tool and need to be used. However, organizations need to be proactive in their retention efforts. Engagement surveys are a key tool. They allow organizations to measure company sentiment and get ahead of turnover by keeping tabs on warning signs.
Take feedback in any way you can, then take action to improve the situation.
Two - Build an awesome on-boarding process
First impressions can be everything. When employees start a new job, they are often tentative and need to be closed to stick around for the long haul. This starts on day one. Have a plan for on-boarding and getting new employees grooved into not only to work but company culture from the start.
This is where a Mentoring Program can help big time. A Mentoring Program which encapsulates on-boarding will match your new talent with top executives, veteran employees and experienced workers. Mentoring ensures that new talent is developed and nurtured from day one. It also shows that the organization invests in employees growing not only professionally but as people which can be the make or break for whether or not they stay for the long haul.
Three - Offer learning and development opportunities
Lacking career growth opportunities is the fastest-growing reason why people are leaving jobs. In 2018, 61% of potential employees ranked career growth as the most important thing when looking for new opportunities.
There are several ways to offer learning and development opportunities. There are ways to boost employee development and entice potential talent without offering large bonuses and promotions. Many employees will consider lateral movements within organizations just as important as an upwards one.
Employees will jump at the chance to develop new skills.
One of the most cost effective ways to offer growth and learning opportunities is to employ a formal Mentoring Program. Mentoring Programs coupled with powerful software (like Wisdom Share provided by Mentor Resources). Mentoring software is cost effective as it allows any organization to match employees the chance to interact and be mentored by top executives. When employees are being mentoring, developing new skills all through resources the organization already has (it’s own employees) they are more likely to stay with the company as they are growing not only as people but professionally.
Four - Humbly say, “Goodbye.”
It is unrealistic to expect people to stay with the same company for decades or more. Even if you are offering the best work experience available you aren’t going to be able to keep everyone. The current median number that employees stay with one organization hovers around 4.2 years.
Better opportunities will arise for employees no matter what you do. The best thing is to devote organizational efforts to being the better opportunity for top talent as much as possible.
Mentor Resources can help any company to leverage technology to create tailored career development programs that are cost-effective. Our mentoring software - Wisdom Share is a cloud-based program that is simple and comes with guided workflows. Included are tools for administrators to attract, enroll, connect and guide participants. We also provide analytics to ensure you can monitor your employee development program and easily see ROI metrics.
Reach out to us today for Free Demonstration of our software.