With unemployment rates at historic lows, it’s an employees’ job market. This is just one of the reasons why, once you’ve hired a good team, you want to keep them.
The other reasons to increase employee retention are simply the overall cost of hiring, on-boarding, and training new team members.
To help you keep all those great employees you’ve hired for your startup, here are three tips to improve employee retention.
#1: Choose the Right People
Your first step to improving your employee retention rates begins with your hiring.
You want to look for team members who are more likely to stay with your startup. You’ll find some key indicators to this right on their resume.
The first clue is how long they’ve been with their previous employers. For example, if your potential recruit has only spent a year at their three previous jobs, they probably aren’t a dedicated team player.
In addition, look for their outside activities. Do you see anything that indicates they are the type of people who stick to something? For example, are they life-long volunteers of a specific organization? Or, are they athletes who spent years honing their craft?
Use these indicators to weed out your potential candidates before you start interviewing.
#2: Meet with Employees Regularly
You’ll avoid large churn rates by meeting with your employees on a regular basis.
For example, you can meet quarterly to find out what they think is going well in your business, and what they might improve. You can ask about relationships, workloads, and more.
This can provide valuable information and let you know if there are any trouble spots.
You might consider letting them respond to you anonymously as well. This gives them the freedom to provide feedback in a safe environment.
Many team members will appreciate being able to tell you just how they feel without you knowing who it is.
#3: Provide the Right Benefits
The benefits you offer your team greatly affects their longevity with your company.
You’ll find that not only do your team members care about their pay, health benefits, and retirement, but they care about the little extras, too. It’s often the lesser known benefits that positively affect your retention rates.
For example, what’s your sick leave policy? How about vacation time? Do you let your team members work from home?
The opportunity to work remotely can be a big bonus for today’s younger workforce. They also like a flexible work arrangement. This may mean working four days for 10 hours a day, or it might mean coming in at noon and staying until 8 pm.
By offering the most comprehensive benefits to your team, you are well poised to have good retention rates. Engaging your staff and providing them with the benefits they want goes a long way to creating an environment people want to work in.
When deciding on your list of benefits, consider asking your team members what would drive their loyalty. Depending on the age and demographics of your staff, their choices may surprise you.
This is why it’s always good to invite their input. Then, most importantly, do what you can to provide what they’re asking for.
Final Thoughts
With happy employees remaining with their companies twice as long as their happy colleagues, you can see why it’s more important than ever that you improve employee retention.
When you create a great company culture, you have a positive employee morale that carries over into your retention strategy.
You can build a company culture that not only retains your best employees, but one that also helps you recruit the best team and encourages new staff members to sign on with your startup.
Be open and transparent, communicate well, offer leadership training to your management team, provide a great on-boarding process, offer great benefits, and be flexible to retain the best team members.
Are you a new startup ready to succeed? Are you looking to get your new business off the ground and watch it rise to success? We are here for you. We can help answer your questions and guide you through the process. Outsource your HR duties, finances, payroll and more to us. Contact Escalon today to get started.
