5 Ways to Say Goodbye to Low Employee Retention

People often think businesses are doing well, mainly when the revenues or profits are average, but they don’t know about the internal struggles and external evidence. Sometimes, they don’t understand that these companies, for example, have recurring problems such as attracting and keeping top talent for a long while. This is otherwise known as low employee retention.

Companies face low employee retention because of:

• Mistreatment of workers
• Poor employee engagement
• Depressing work environment

All these factors are directly responsible for how much businesses can keep their employees in the short or long term.

What Is Employee Turnover?

Let’s say you started a business, employed people to help out, and they started leaving one by one till every person left. What would be on your mind?

That’s what employee turnover means when workers begin to resign from their workplace because of issues such as:

• Work dissatisfaction
• Low or no employee recognition
• Absence of development structures to improve them
• Disorientation and disorganized system within the workplace

Employee turnover is the rate at which workers resign or desert a company regularly, and it’s quantified on three bases which are:

• Monthly
• Quarterly
• Annually

There are two basic types of turnover:

• Voluntary: employees leave willingly and have their reasons for tendering their resignation
• Involuntary: company board decides to lay off workers due to factors like destructive behavior, poor performances and bankrupt status

What Is a Retention Strategy?

When a business knows that many issues concerning workers’ happiness need to be addressed, they try as much as possible to draw up a plan to that effect.

Plans like this are known as retention strategies, and they aim toward achieving:

• High retention rate
• Low turnover
• Improved employee engagement
• Avert depreciation

Although there are times when employee turnovers are unavoidable, such as voluntary ones, a retention strategy can always help reduce these disparaging problems.

Facts on Employee Retention

Many employees have diverse reasons for sticking to or leaving a business. While some have issues with the management, others may be confused about what they should do. The truth is no company wants to lose their employees because of how much talent and efficiency they bring to the table.

Knowing retention statistics helps you to tackle employee problems better. Retaining your best staff will always be a challenge you must overcome.

Well, let’s take a look at some employee retention statistics — and how they can help you avoid a shortage of capable hands in your business:

• 87% of employees acknowledge retention planning as necessary (Fortune Magazine, 2016)
• 82% of employees quit their jobs because they can’t advance their careers in the company (Career Addict, 2020)
• Excellent onboarding training increases the rate of employee retention by 82% (Glassdoor, 2015)
• 70% of employees prefer to work in a company where their training and development are encouraged (The Harris Poll, 2019)
• 94% of employees tend to stay longer in a business if they are given the necessary support to learn (Workplace Survey Report, 2022)
• 69% of employees that undergoes an excellent onboarding program will stay for a minimum of 3 years in an organization (Clickboarding, 2017)

Main Drivers of Retention

According to Zenefits, 63.3% of small business owners deemed employee retention very difficult compared to hiring.

The reasons responsible for their exits include:

• Work burnout
• Stunted growth in career
• Less employee appreciation
• Poor payment and no achievement matched benefits

Well, you can resolve these above-mentioned reasons by deciding to pay close attention and finding every means to put an end to them.

The factors responsible for driving up retention rates in companies are:

• Great work-life balance
• Individuals and business aims to be on the same page
• Work flexibility
• Excellent relationship between manager and employee

Ways to Improve Your Employee Retention Rate

Most company owners aim to ensure that they can keep the best of their employees and, if possible, retain every other one contributing effectively to their success. However, keeping top employees is always difficult for some businesses, primarily because of a lack of strategy in the first place. It’s normal for you to think about keeping your workers, but if there’s no plan to accomplish such, then turnover is unavoidable.

You can prevent this business-sucking problem and make a remarkable difference in your company by employing the use of the following strategies.

1. Have a Goal-Setting Model

Before establishing your business, you must have thought about different ideas and therefore draw up some goals to guide success. One of the best ways to achieve goals like this is to set up a model known as Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). Successful businesses out there use OKRs to accomplish goals that require significant effort and zealousness.

There are different types of OKRs, such as:

• Team OKRs
• Individual OKRs
• Personal OKRs

Having OKRs in your business will help to:

• Accomplish realistic and sensible targets
• Ensure your business centralizes focus on specific priorities
• Provide an insightful system for managing employee-manager performances
• Concentrate on achieving goals that matter most at a time
• Monitor the rate of progress in realizing goals

Fully implementing OKRs in business is a great way to keep your employees happy and continuously in their jobs.

2. Improve Work Flexibility

The world keeps changing, so businesses must adapt or face the risk of being left behind. Most employees now prefer flexible jobs, pushing companies to adopt flexibility in their working mode. While few people still do 9-5 jobs, others like Millenials and Gen Zs prefer remote jobs and will accept nothing less. If keeping the best talent pool of workers is your priority, you must consider improving work flexibility.

3. Encourage Workplace Diversity

Your company may have people with different orientations, backgrounds, and ideas. Workplace diversity is a factor that businesses can’t avoid, but they often get it wrong when not able to properly utilize the advantages embedded in it.

For any business to succeed, workplace diversity is crucial because having a team made up of different people brings the following factors to your company’s table:

• Plenty of creative ideas
• Excellent decision-makers
• Quick problem detectors and solving experts
• Mind-boggling or innovative individuals

Properly encouraging workplace diversity improves employee engagement which is directly responsible for lower turnover rates.

4. Strengthen Company Culture

Employees enjoy their jobs when they know their duties, belong to an organization with positive vibes, and know the aims and objectives set aside for accomplishment. Strengthening your work culture is a great way to retain and keep employees satisfied with their duties.

You can solidify company culture by:

• Explaining the company mission to employees
• Encouraging employee-manager relationship
• Recognizing employee achievement
• Advocating for collaborative efforts between workers

5. Pay Concrete Attention to Onboarding

Did you know that when a person comes into a company for the first time and doesn’t know things that ought to be done, the individual’s period of stay is automatically short-lived? Well, that’s why you must ensure that potential employees go through proper onboarding practices before entering your business.

You can carry out the following steps to decrease the employee turnover rate through onboarding practices in your business:

• Begin the onboarding process before the employee begins work
• Delegate mentors to them
• Inform them about their duties
• Clarify company goals
• Use different methods of training, including onboarding tools and eLearning

Final Thoughts

Most well-to-do businesses out there have a high rate of retaining their workers and aggressively engaging them. Indeed, you wouldn’t like a situation of laying off and bringing in new workers because of the stress and cost. Saying goodbye to low employee retention is possible if you plan and follow through with the necessary steps.