How to Improve Employee Retention: Your Go-To Resources

What makes or breaks an employee’s decision to stay at your company? Even if you conduct exit interviews, you may never find out the real reasons. 

However, there are common best practices you can lean on for driving employee retention. If you’re wondering how to improve employee retention, best practices like the below can help. 

• Offer upskilling and learning and development opportunities 
• Provide benefits that serve all employees
• Have processes for internal and lateral moves
• Equip managers with the right training
• Clearly outline roles and responsibilities in job descriptions
• Look for ways to improve your hiring process
• Ensure your team feels heard
• Allow employees work environment flexibility

But, preventing the common reasons for attrition at the start of your hiring process will go a long way. Learn how to improve employee retention pre-hire here.

Let’s see what HR leaders are prioritizing when it comes to maintaining their unicorns.

Laurie Ruettimann in 5 ways to improve employee retention 

Laurie shares that transparency is overrated when it comes to driving employee retention, stating, “Adults are adults: responsible, accountable, but also passionate and nervous about their self-interests. You can retain your workforce by being open, having mature conversations about important topics, but also staying one step ahead of emotional reactions. Don’t be condescending, but don’t be irresponsible with important information.”

TalentCare in Turnover sucks, don’t let it ruin your reputation

In this article, TalentCare highlights the perks of conducting exit interviews, which reveal more information on what went wrong. TalentCare shares “This is a wrap-up meeting between management representatives and someone who is leaving an organization, either voluntarily or through termination and can help you understand reasons for an individual employee’s departure, gauge morale, identify disconnects with leadership, compensation or other culture or workplace problems.”.

Robert Half Talent Solutions in Making work-life balance a part of employee retention 

Everyone wants the flexibility to choose where they work, right? This piece highlights the importance of work-life balance, sharing “Flexibility is the basic idea behind alternative work arrangements. You give employees some measure of control over their work schedules — and workspaces — thereby making it easier for them to manage non-job-related responsibilities and maintain work-life balance. There’s also a business rationale behind the concept. When it’s easier for employees to deal with pressures on the home front, they are likely to be more productive when they’re on the job — and less inclined to jump ship if one of your competitors offers them a little more money.”

Recruiting News Network in How to prioritize retention in 2023

While exit interviews are great for considering your next hire and revisiting the processes you have in place, stay interviews are just as important. Stay interviews are a way to prevent attrition and resolve a problem before it becomes one. RNN shares, “While exit interviews can help HR managers determine why people leave, stay interviews can help HR professionals discover what would make someone leave, and make changes before they do.” 

CIO Dive in Employers should prioritize retention over hiring

Learning and development opportunities allow employees to know they have growth trajectories and next steps within your organization. CIO Dive shares their view on this “While 62% of employers surveyed said they struggle with increased recruiting costs, only one-third said that high staff turnover is a problem. To combat this issue, leaders need to develop career paths for customer experience staff that expand beyond the contact center, the report said. That means robust learning programs — and a culture of learning and development — may be a key retention tool for those organizations, the report continued. Such programs should tie into employees’ personal and professional goals, it said.”

MP Wired for HR on 2023 employee retention: 7 key strategies 

Supporting work-life balance is a recurring employee retention tip from HR leaders. Also important for driving employee retention is discussing employee performance, providing recognition, and evaluating benefits and compensation. “Employers and employees will benefit profoundly when performance reviews are optimized all year.  Employee satisfaction will skyrocket when they can achieve more and know they’re good at their jobs.”

Jill Christensen in A fix to stop employees from being miserable

What if an employee’s next growth opportunity is to become a manager but they don’t want to manage a team? It’s important to know what your employee’s goals are today, next month, and in the years to come. Jill weighs in on this, sharing “If organizations continue to promote people into managerial positions because they excel at their job, we will continue to have a lot of bad managers in organizations and high levels of employee disengagement. The fix?  Do not promote someone into a managerial role unless they are passionate about becoming a great leader and leading others.  If they are not?  Recognize them in other ways that make them feel appreciated, acknowledged, and recognized.” 

Tim Sackett in Does your average employee tenure matter

Employee retention and tenure impact leadership and the growth and success of your company. Tim shares the need to prioritize retention saying “Employee tenure is important, and it matters a great deal to the success of your organization. If you’re telling yourself and your leadership that it doesn’t, that it’s just ‘kids’ today, we can’t do anything about it, you’re doing your organization a disservice. You can do something about it. Employee retention, at all levels, should be the number 1, 2, and 3 top priorities of your HR shop.”

Josh Bersin in How do we build trust – the most important retention tool of all 

In this podcast, Josh explains how to improve employee retention by investing in training and development, but most importantly building trust. Your employees and customers need to trust your company, in order for you to retain top talent, and continue building on success. 

Lastly, Cangrade has additional resources on how to improve employee retention to get you started on decreasing attrition:

1. Create an effective retention strategy 
2. 4 ways to use employee development for retention 
3. Innovative benefits to increase retention
4. Strategies to retain the perfect hire

To see how Cangrade’s solutions determine which candidates in your talent pool are more likely to stay, book a demo today.