Employee retention refers to the ability of an organization to retain its employees. Employee retention can be represented by a simple statistic (for example, a retention rate of 80% usually indicates that an organization kept 80% of its employees in a given period). However, many consider employee retention as relating to the efforts by which employers attempt to retain employees in their workforce. In this sense, retention becomes the strategies rather than the outcome.
Retention Programs
It is important to first pinpoint the root cause of the retention issue before implementing a program to address it. Once identified, a program can be tailored to meet the unique needs of the organization. A variety of programs exist to help increase employee retention, which are
- Career Development – It is important for employees to understand their career path within an organization to motivate them to remain in the organization to achieve their personal career goals. Through surveys, discussion and classroom instruction, employees can better understand their goals for personal development. With these developmental goals in mind, organizations can offer tailored career development opportunities to their employees.
- Executive Coaching – Executive coaching can be used to build competencies in leaders within an organization. Coaching can be useful in times of organizational change, to increase a leader’s effectiveness or to encourage managers to implement coaching techniques with peers and direct reports. The coaching process begins with an assessment of the individual’s strengths and opportunities for improvement. The issues are then prioritized and interventions are delivered to target key weaknesses. Assistance is then provided to encourage repeated use of newly acquired skills.
- Motivating Across Generations – Today’s workforce includes a diverse population of employees from multiple generations. As each generation holds different expectations for the workplace, it is important to understand the differences between these generations regarding motivation and engagement. Managers, especially, must understand how to handle the differences among their direct reports.
- Orientation and On Boarding – An employee’s perception of an organization takes shape during the first several days on the job. It is in the best interest of both the employee and the organization to impart knowledge about the company quickly and effectively to integrate the new employee into the workforce. By implementing an effective on boarding process, short-term turnover rates will decrease and productivity will increase.
- Women’s Retention Programs – Programs such as mentoring, leadership development and networking that are geared specifically toward women can help retain top talent and decrease turnover costs. By implementing programs to improve work/life balance, employees can be more engaged and productive while at work.
Retention Tools and Resources
- Employee Surveys – By surveying employees, organizations can gain insight into the motivation, engagement and satisfaction of their employees. It is important for organizations to understand the perspective of the employee in order to create programs targeting any particular issues that may impact employee retention.
- Exit Interviews – By including exit interviews in the process of employee separation, organizations can gain valuable insight into the workplace experience. Exit interviews allow the organization to understand the triggers of the employee’s desire to leave as well as the aspects of their work that they enjoyed. The organization can then use this information to make necessary changes to their company to retain top talent. Exit interviews must, however, ask the right questions and elicit honest responses from separating employees to be effective.
- Employee Retention Consultants – An employee retention consultant can assist organizations in the process of retaining top employees. Consultants can provide expertise on how to best identify the issues within an organization that are related to turnover. Once identified, a consultant can suggest programs or organizational changes to address these issues and may also assist in the implementation of these programs or changes.
