Cultural Fit, Retention and Saying Goodbye
In the last year and a half, millions of employees from multiple sectors around the world have joined a mass exodus from the workplace. Many have tried explaining the mass exodus, but reports indicate it may be due to inadequate salaries, limited career advancement, poor work-life balances, general unhappiness with management or the company and numerous other reasons.
This so-called Great Resignation, spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic, has turned employment into a worker’s market. TikTok users have coined phrases such as “quiet quitting” and “act your wage” as employees find community with others who don’t feel properly valued or appreciated by their workplaces.
As employees decide what’s right for them, employers are having to reconsider what actually makes their company worth working for. If you feel like your business may be at risk of losing top talent, or you have already begun losing your best workers to the Great Resignation, it is probably time to consider some employee retention strategies.
Here are the final 3 ideas of 15 effective strategies to boost employee job satisfaction and help you hold on to your best workers.
Every workplace is different and not every workplace requires the same types of employee engagement—one of the best ways to avoid this issue is to ask employees what they’d prefer.
- Hire for the Cultural Fit
Many people can learn a specific skill or develop certain expertise. But not just anyone fits into an existing team nor shares the cultural values of your employees and your company. Hiring for the cultural fit can ensure long-term employee retention because these new hires will mesh well with the team quicker, making everyone more comfortable and getting productivity back on track faster.
In fact, a Harvard Business Review article cites bad hiring decisions as one of the top causes of employee loss, with 41% of surveyed employers estimating a single bad hire costing their business $25,000 or more.
- Manage for Retention. A 2022 report on the Employee Experience by Udemy found nearly 50% of employees quit their job because of a bad manager or lack or recognition. A good manager, on the other hand, acts not as a “boss” but as a “coach.”
The key difference being that while a boss is seen as an unsatisfiable source of demand micromanaging every aspect of employees’ work, a coach knows their employees are players on a team. A good employer or coach works to guide employees in the right direction by offering advice, support and goals while still allowing their workers to have a high degree of autonomy.
Giving positive feedback os a key component for success.
- Know When It’s Time to Say Goodbye
Unfortunately, no amount of strategy will guarantee perfect employee retention. At some point, your employees must move on, either to retire or to find work more suited to what they’re looking for.
Knowing when it’s time to say goodbye and handling employee offboarding effectively and well is just as important for overall employee retention as any of these other strategies. Remaining employees should know they will be well taken care of whenever they do move on themselves.
This is especially true when it comes to toxic employees. You need to help them find suitable alternative employment before they taint the spirit of the team. It will do YOU, and THEM a favour.
Why Employees Leave and Why They Stay.
Encouraging employees to stay is important, but knowing why employees leave can be more important to developing an effective retention strategy. Offboarding, the process of closing the employment of a departing employee, can be just as important as onboarding. Offboarding can help encourage an amicable separation, ensures the transfer of knowledge and secures the company’s property and data as well as help a company learn why an employee is leaving and what it might be able to do in the future to keep employees.
A key part of the offboarding process is the exit interview, which can give employers insight into why employees are departing. A few of the most common reasons—especially after the COVID-19 pandemic—include:
Inadequate salary or hourly rate
Lack of positive feedback
Feeling overworked or burnt out and unsupported
No, or limited, room for growth and career advancement
Need for a better work-life balance
Unhappy with management or the company culture
More compelling job opportunities
A Recognition program, manual or utilising a proven platform such as Brownie Points will go a long way in your retention strategy when implemented to recognise positive behaviour, and while it can’t make up for low pay, it often helps employees stay longer and work harder, thus making a positive impact your bottom line.
The overall sentiment of the 15 strategies to retain and attract staff is to ensure that they feel valued, respected, part of the team, and have a clear picture of the strategic goals of the company.
Ignore these at your peril. If you do, your competitors will be grateful as they recruit your top performers.
Tony Delaney, CEO Brownie Points
