How to Reduce Employee Turnover: 8 Tactics to Try

Employee retention and turnover have no quick fix or magic wand. What works for one company may not work for another. However, specific approaches remain tried and true. Put people first. Always be transparent and communicate. And hire intelligently.

Sounds easy, right? The fact that we continue to discuss how to reduce employee turnover shows that it’s a complex task, especially as our workplaces continue to change.

Read on to learn about how to reduce employee turnover for your organization.

How To Reduce Employee Turnover Pre-Hire

Don’t wait until a candidate is hired before you work on reducing turnover possibilities. Instead, start before—well before—a new employee’s first day, during the pre-hire stage.

Here are four tactics for how to reduce employee turnover during this stage:

• Check in—regularly– on your company’s culture. Ah, organizational culture. Another hot topic in HR strategy. And rightly so. Studies have shown that a positive, supportive work environment directly impacts retention and performance among employees—for the better. Although culture is often specific to different industries and employers, you should consider supervisory styles, interpersonal relationships, work-life balance, and training and development, when looking at culture.

• Stay competitive with a benefits package that matters. What employees value continues to evolve, including what’s offered through their workplace benefits packages. Although you can still attract top talent with traditional benefits, such as retirement and health plans, you’ll find yourself behind the eight ball if you don’t offer more. According to a recent PwC survey, one-third of employees surveyed said they value non-traditional benefits such as paid time off to volunteer, flexible work options, and bolstered mental health benefits.

• Refine your job postings. When was the last time you reviewed your job postings? If you’re looking for ways to reduce employee turnover, this may be a good time to review and rewrite. When creating these postings, you want to express your culture and values while giving the job candidate transparent information about what the job requires and what you expect. Do away with platitudes and focus on the reality of the position. Also, make sure your job descriptions contain gender-neutral language, or else you might risk turning off top-tiered candidates before they even apply.

• Use pre-hire assessments to identify quality candidates. Pre-hire assessments play right into hiring intelligently to reduce turnover. For example, with Cangrade’s AI-powered pre-assessment tool you can predict candidate success up to 10x more accurately than any other method. By incorporating proven pre-hire assessments into your recruitment platforms, you can identify job applicants who not only have the skills for the position but are more likely to stay with your company, helping you reduce turnover in your pre-hire phase.

How to Reduce Employee Turnover Post-Hire

Once an employee is hired, your job of reducing turnover continues. Here are four ways to encourage retention during the post-hire period.

• Put effort into your onboarding. You don’t want to lose your newly hired employees before they even get started. Studies have shown that standardized, robust onboarding programs boost employee retention. For example, companies with solid onboarding processes “improve new hire retention by 82% and productivity by over 70%. Companies with weak onboarding programs lose the confidence of their candidates and are more likely to lose these individuals in the first year.”

• Recognize your employees—often. When employees feel appreciated by their employers, they stay longer—in fact, three to six months longer than those who receive no recognition. According to a recent study, 63 percent of employees who are “always” or “usually” recognized in the workplace are “very unlikely” to search for a new job over the next three to six months, whereas only 11 percent who receive little to no recognition feel the same way.

• Offer flexibility. Never has flexibility in the workplace been as important. According to a recent study, only 36 percent of Millennials and 46 percent of Gen X and Gen Z prefer to work on-site full-time. The majority of employees prefer a more flexible arrangement that employers must adopt permanently to reduce employee turnover.

• Train and develop your employees for their next steps. Upskilling. Reskilling. Cross-skilling. Employees today value training and development opportunities, helping to improve engagement and retention. A recent study found that not only can training and development increase employees’ current skillsets, allowing them to perform their jobs better, it also increases employee engagement, reducing turnover.

How to reduce employee turnover will continue to be a critical metric for human resources professionals. Find out how Cangrade’s Pre-Hire Assessments can help your organization reduce turnover by hiring candidates that will stay.