Up to a quarter of potential employees have made it known that they not only intend, but actively plan to quit their jobs this year. At a time when many businesses and critical industries are becoming short-staffed, it’s not hard to see why companies are desperate to retain their workforce and to do anything reasonable in encouraging them to stay.
Communities like r/antiwork on the popular forum Reddit are populated by users showcasing unfair working standards, low pay, and the high cost of living which is, understandably, making staff who would otherwise want to work long and fulfilling careers feel demotivated before they even get the chance to start.
Lessening your staff turnover is essential in 2022, then, and it matters more than ever for businesses to succeed. Yet while raising wages and increasing benefits are perhaps methods you’re already trying, it’s worth considering exactly what else you could apply in order to lessen that turnover and prevent costs from rising because of it. In this post, then, we will deign to discuss this and more:
Recognize Employees Appropriately
It’s very important to have space to recognize your employees as they deserve to be recognized. This might mean running an employee of the month scheme, giving out awards with real prizes at the end of the year as a corporate event you can make use of, or simply using great work as a means to leverage someone’s career for the better, and to consider if they ask for a pay rise.
Without employees going above and beyond for your firm, it wouldn’t be where it is today. In fact, employees often want to give their all at the career path they have in front of them, but they’re much less likely to do that, or to feel actualized, if there’s no reward for doing so. Don’t incentivize them to do the bare minimum.
Thankfully, with employee recognition software, this approach needn’t seem so strangely applied and heavy-handed. You can be smart about how effectively and frequently good work is credited without praise ringing hollow via overuse. An approach like this can provide the best of both worlds, a mediating factor hard to achieve otherwise when managing people.
Listen To Feedback
Listening to the essential feedback of your staff helps them feel as though you care about what they have to say. But you don’t have to pretend or be performative about this, as they often have appropriate insights to tell you.
A regular team meeting where staff have a chance to voice their opinions or ideas, a communications channel where staff can appropriately talk with their managers as immediately and securely as they need to, and the ability for them to raise issues or report errors and have them looked at in short order can combine to create a workforce that feels happier, listened to, and of course, willing to talk in the first place.
This kind of approach can help even the most tight-lipped employee see the benefit in engaging with the process, as their thoughts is seen to potentially change the workplace for the better around them. Even something as simple as voting on measures that will change employee norms can be key – such as where they’d prefer to be situated during an office renovation, in another part of the building, or outside in a temporary office unit while construction takes place?
Exercise Working Freedoms
It can be good to allow your staff to exercise the working freedoms most useful to them. Of course, your workplace may not be a free-form place designed to foster creativity such as Google and its fire poles, slides, and ball pits, but there are certain provisions you may wish to grant your staff in order for them to feel appropriately cared for, and as if they have flexibility.
To start with, remote work is not a concept that should shock any of us at this point. In fact, companies that allowed for this provision during the Covid-19 pandemic and are know going back on those efforts are increasingly starting to look old-hat, as if glued to the old ways without much in the way of actual reasoning to do so.
It might be that instead of enforcing a dress code at your workplace, you let staff use their best judgment. Providing worthwhile kitchen facilities, while basic, can help them become more able to bring in their own lunches and prepare them appropriately. Something as simple as a cycle to work scheme could also incentivize health improvement, leading to happier, more satisfied staff members coming into work each morning.
As you can see, provided these freedoms are measured and appropriate, you lose nothing from giving them, and staff that feel empowered are more likely to stick around as a consequence.
A Proper HR System
There’s a common belief that HR departments are simply there to protect the management from claims of improper treatment, or that they serve as the enforcement arm of a company treating its staff in particular ways.
After all, you choose your HR staff, and you pay their wages. Yet it’s important to recognize that HR should be a place where any staff member can come forward and discuss troubles they’re having, the advice they need, support they require, or to initiative a complaint or a confidential report.
If that trust is gone, then staff feel as though they can never truly open up as they may otherwise wish to. That can be a travesty and a real problem to tackle with. It can also raise staff turnover to a point where it feels uncomfortable to deal with. This is why it’s important to focus on how the rights and dignity of your employees can be cared for at every moment, allowing them to see your workplace as trustworthy environment no matter what. A combination of all of these efforts can make the most difference.
With this advice, we believe lessening your staff turnover in 2022 and beyond will be all the more possible than before.
