The Great Resignation leaves a gaping hole in business, irrespective of the sector. The event fired up tons of questions.
What is the retention rate at your company? What's the main reason for people leaving?
Do you think salary is the leading cause of resignation? Or is it the lack of career growth or something else completely?
The answers to these questions may boil down to how you give importance to employee retention, particularly in the technology industry. Roughly 65% of employees in the US are chasing new positions, says The PwC Next in Work. The report also found that nearly two-thirds of employees think of changing jobs in the next 12 months.
But why?
There is no denying the fact that employees are always looking for better opportunities than what they currently have. This makes it essential for any company to keep its workforce happy and satisfied to enhance employee retention rate.
If you are an employer, you need to take a closer look at the reasons why your employees are leaving. This will help you to identify the causes and come up with strategies to prevent further resignations.
It is not always about salaries and benefits that make employees stay or go. Today's challenge is that employees seem to be more demanding, and therefore expect more from an organization than ever before.
Employee retention rate depends on various factors such as company culture, management skills, loyalty programs, perks & benefits, etc.
Talents need to be given the proper tools and resources to thrive and be successful.
Talent acquisition, retention, and development are now the key focus for business executives. It is now more critical than ever that hiring managers understand its reasons as this will help them retain their best talents.
Do you know? It takes around four months to recruit a new employee. Then, when they join, it takes around four months for them to become productive with their work. So, if you have a talent working in your company for 12 months or more, it means you have already invested around eight months in them.
In other words, if you have a talent who has been with your organization for two years and resigns, it means that your organization has wasted a huge amount of money, right?
Since time is money, employers must take the necessary steps to retain their best employees and avoid high-cost technology recruitment processes.
Below is a list of things that can be done to create a culture that will encourage and provide sufficient resources to the talent, especially right now that the work environment is fast-paced and evolving:
- Promote transparency in communication. This will help employees to know exactly what the company is expecting from them. Keep them informed about any changes or updates in policy and procedure to avoid any form of confusion. Lack of communication leads to a lack of trust, which results in employee dissatisfaction. Ensure your talent knows their specific roles and responsibilities.
In the technology industry, there are a lot of changes due to shifting trends. Therefore employers must provide training and development opportunities to employees to upgrade their skills and remain competitive.
- Keep your talent motivated. Make sure they feel special and essential to the company. Do everything you can to motivate them individually – giving them praise, recognition, bonuses, raises. This will make them happy and stay with the organization longer.
Work-life balance is a critical element of retention strategies for any company. When employees feel that the organization values their work and opinions, they are more likely to give their 100%.
To create an motivating and satisfying environment for employees, it is essential to maintain the 'flexibility factor' in business. Align job expectations, rewards, and benefits to your talent's current lifestyle.
Don't overextend your employees. Make sure they have a work-life balance as well as a flexible schedule so they can do things outside of work.
Make sure you accommodate for time offs, working from home, or flex hours. Allow them to have more time for themselves which will reduce stress and increase their productivity level to give their best to the company.
Let them feel you understand their needs and demands.
Employees want to know that you care about them. They want the opportunity to share their knowledge with others, to help others grow in their careers, and to build relationships with other employees.
Alter your hybrid work models accordingly. Do a good job to keep them happy.
Innovation comes from different perspectives, opinions, and experiences. Diversity is what makes a company unique, and that's why it's essential to hire people from different cultures, backgrounds, and levels of education. This will provide your company with fresh ideas, new perspectives, and a new way to look at things that will help you produce better results.
Although a hybrid workplace comes with a lot of benefits, it also poses a few challenges as well.
The most common challenge the hybrid model faces is that employees feel isolated from colleagues or feel like they are working in silos. This leads to mental fatigue, lacking of productivity, and eventually causing employee turnover. Hybrid work models aren't always successful because not all employees can adjust easily.
However, with the right approach, you can still make it work. Make sure that you are open to their suggestions and ideas to improve the work environment.
Take, for example, IT developers working in a very structured environment where they are supposed to complete certain tasks within a fixed time frame. If the employee has a lot of app development projects at hand which need time, is very busy or overloaded with work rather than meeting deadlines, this can lead to poor performance level and eventually cause him or her to leave your company.
But if the company can adjust its work environment to fit the needs of its employees, they will thank you later.