WHY EMPLOYEE RETENTION MATTERS (HOW TO KEEP YOUR BEST STAFF)

Posted on Tuesday, 11th June - 2019, in ADVICE & TIPS and INSIGHTS, by Marcus Richards

Newsflash: employee retention matters.

If you don’t have a high employee-retention rate, it’s a sign of a bigger problem. You could be looking at unhappy employees, a lack of cohesion, and poor productivity. Chances are, your company culture could use some work too. Let’s explore why employee retention matters.

First, let’s take a look at why you should worry about how to keep your best people.

EMPLOYEE LOYALTY SAVES YOU MONEY

How much time do you have available to train new staff members over and over again? Do you enjoy watching them struggle to learn the ropes for the first month? From a purely practical standpoint, you will save so much time and money by just getting the right people and holding onto them instead of rotating through new recruits every few months, upsetting your team’s balance every time.

In terms of your financial bottom line, consider this fact:

According to a report from Harvard Business School, “Workers in the top 1 percent in terms of productivity add about $5,000 to profit per year, while a toxic worker costs about $12,000 per year.”

Without a thriving company culture, there’s no way your best employees are going to stick around. Company culture is actually one of the top reasons that anyone stays in the same job. Studies originally published by the Harvard Business Review show that 54 percent of employees said that a strong sense of community in the workplace kept them at the same company longer than they planned when it wasn’t even in their best financial interest to stay.

EMPLOYEE RETENTION SIGNALS STRONG, PRODUCTIVE TEAMS

If you want to see how productive your staff really, start asking for feedback. Good questions to ask are:

• What did you think about this company after your first month working here?
• How has that observation changed since then, and why?
• How do you feel you are helping others to succeed on this team?
• What do you think you could improve to contribute more to your co-workers?

COMPANY CULTURE CAN BOOST RETENTION AND WORK QUALITY

When employees enjoy their environment, they’re happier to do more without burning out.

Now, you can define culture in three different ways. If you Google “company culture,” you’ll get answers reflecting a company’s achievements, their habits, and their working environment. Culture Amp breaks company culture down into three components:

First, culture comes largely from the achievements that the whole group takes pride in and reflects on as a team. Common goals create the culture and nourish it on a daily basis. The achievement that you’re aiming for provides a focal point. Having a common focus unites people and helps them overcome their differences. This also helps people develop complementary skills that will be more useful for the whole team. People are more likely to support each other when they understand how each one of them is contributing to the rest of the team, especially when others rely on what they’ve done to complete their own tasks.

Secondly, a strong company culture encourages others to do great work by building positive habits. Managers and staff members should be encouraging new hires to form good habits. They should also reward positive social behaviours because they maximize intellectual achievement.

Finally, the workplace environment needs to help everyone do better work. If the conditions aren’t suitable for people to grow and develop, then productivity will plummet. Is your working environment conducive to employee improvement, or is it full of unwelcome distractions and disorganized elements that make people feel unmotivated?

LET UNIQUE TEAM BUILDING BOOST YOUR CULTURE

For more great ideas about building up your company culture to boost employee retention, check out our post on creating inspiring mission statements that people can believe in. When you’re ready to look more closely at your culture, schedule a retreat with Unique Team Building. We’ll help you pull your team together, strengthen trust and communication, and turn co-workers into a family. Contact us for more information.