Keep Your Top Talent With These Employee Retention Strategies

The U.S. job market is getting increasingly competitive. As a result, many companies struggleto attract skilled employees while also fight to retain their current workforce.

Since your employees are your most valuable asset, you can’t afford to lose them to your competitors. 

Thankfully, it is something you can address proactively by experimenting with different employee retention strategies.

First and foremost - employee turnover can be very expensive. Studies have shown that the cost of replacing an employee can be double their annual salary. 

But it’s not just cost, high employee turnover can have a significant effect on your remaining staff. For starters, it increases their workload and leads to unprecedented amounts of stress. Your employees won’t perform at their peak levels in these conditions. Ultimately, your customers will also feel the effects when the quality inevitably drops. 

Worst-case scenario, this may lead to more departures. Just look at what happened when the new Twitter CEO, Elon Musk, asked the remaining employees to pick up the slack after massive layoffs. Key players left the company in droves. 

To keep your talent happy, and in turn, convince them that working for you is the right thing to do, you can try the following employee retention strategies:

1. Invest in your employees’ career development

Most highly-skilled workers understand they need to upgrade their skills to move up the company ladder and stay competitive. To inspire them to stick with you, you can meet their personal needs for career development by investing in additional training. 

You can also provide them with mentorship programs that might help you upskill your employees and increase their satisfaction. 

In turn, this also deepens your talent base, so it’s a win-win scenario for everyone involved.

2. Reassess your industry’s compensation standards

You can try everything to keep your workers happy, but if they’re not adequately compensated, they will look at other options - as simple as that.

This is why you should regularly check the wages your competitors offer in order to stay competitive.

It also doesn’t hurt to implement a strategy to reward your top performers appropriately to make them feel valued. Look at the standard of your industry to determine the right amount.

3. Update your benefits package

Regarding non-salary factors employees consider when assessing a job, a company’s benefits package takes the cake. For instance, something simple like lower healthcare premiums or longer parental leave may be what tips the odds in favor of your employees wanting to stay at their jobs.

4. Normalize working remotely

While some jobs can never be fully remote, you should try your best to create those opportunities whenever possible. For example, you can loosen your approach by offering a remote work option which includes in-person meetings or core office days. 

That way, the employees who prefer working remotely can feel satisfied while not losing out on the benefits of a collaborative work environment.

5. Place more emphasis on flexibility

Today’s employees enjoy flexibility in their working schedule, so keep that in mind when building out your employee retention strategy. 

It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, simply give your employees enough flexibility to rearrange their working schedule so they can run an important errand in the middle of the day. That way, they’ll feel a higher sense of control even if the number of working hours remains the same.

Even a compressed workweek (working 35 to 45 hours in less than five days) will do wonders for their satisfaction without any negative effects on their output. 

6. Improve the work-life balance for your employees

While the previous employee retention strategies are certainly important, they’ll have limited success if your workforce is chronically overworked.

Try to encourage open communication regarding workloads. You can do so by reminding your managers to check in with employees often if they can realistically handle their current work volume. 

No one likes crunch, so you should also do your best to avoid it. Try eliminating unnecessary administrative duties that don’t add value and keep unproductive meetings to a minimum. If that fails and your standard workload is unsustainable, consider adding new staff to augment your core team.

7. Consider the well-being of your employees

Burnout, whether from overworking, from high levels of stress in the workplace, or simply the nature of day-to-day duties, is real. It's also really expensive - some reports are saying burnout costs $3,400 out of every $10,000 a worker makes in salaries.

The adage of a healthy body and healthy mind still rings true, so you cannot go wrong with offering reimbursements for gym memberships or perks like wellness. Additionally, if possible, try to obtain insurance coverage for therapy, or at least offer a subscription to an online therapy service. 

8. Recognize your employees’ contributions

Humans thrive on validation, which is why you should take that extra step to make your employees feel appreciated. 

A 2022 survey has revealed that more than half of employees are less likely to jump ship if they feel their hard work is being recognized and valued. 

Instruct your managers to recognize the efforts of the employees, and maybe you can even try implementing a system that offers company-wide recognition of workers who knocked it out of the ballpark.

10. Hire the right employees

While hiring new talent sounds counterproductive in the list of employee retention strategies, it is one of the ways to minimize employee turnover in the long run. 

By attracting top talent that’s perfectly in tune with your work culture, you’re getting someone who will stick with your company for the long haul. 

Keep in mind that this option should be used as a last resort after other employee retention strategies failed to yield results. Don’t think your effort was in vain because if you managed to introduce all of these improvements, they will also help you attract qualified talent - a double treat.

Employee retention strategies can help you avoid the dreaded employee turnover problem. However, you will also see a lot of positive side effects, such as a spike in productivity, a higher quality of output, etc.

Ultimately, the quality-of-life improvements will help you build a reputation as a company that’s a joy to work for. It’s a long-term effort that will eventually help you attract new employees when your company inevitably grows.