Employee Retention Strategy, Helping Your Employees Succeed

With the job market slowly opening up, employers are seeking advice on what steps they can take to increase employee retention.

The best guidance out there is centered on one thing: earning some of that good ol' worker loyalty.

Your employees need certain things from you from day one in order to do their jobs well. By paving the way for your employees’ success, you provide a sense of stability and cultivate loyalty. However, after working with companies in various industries, we've found that most employees receive insufficient training and/or unclear direction about what is expected of them at the outset. To prove your own fidelity to your employees, the first steps after hiring should be the following:

• Introducing each person (or most) in the company. The new hire needs to know whom to turn to with related questions.
• Thorough, time-consuming training--even for quick learners and experienced personnel. Skimp on this, and it will prove costly down the line.
• Asking what else they need to succeed, and following up multiple times a year. This doesn't have to be a superfluous exercise in hand-holding. Help them establish, and meet, certain goals.

Employee motivation is another essential component of retention initiatives. Cash incentives and numbers-based analyses of success are only effective with certain people. Many are more motivated by continual verbal feedback. Get to know what 'speaks' to a given employee. And keep the communication open. Listening well makes employees feel they are an important part of your business, and encourages a similar response.

For more on this topic, check out Harvard Business Review's compelling story about the managers of Pixar going above and beyond for their employees. And here is another article on ensuring employee success.

Anyone else have stories about your employer inspiring confidence and fidelity in you as an employee? Do you think smaller businesses are better at that because of the more intimate office environment, or do larger companies offer better support services for their workers?