3 Tips For Employee Retention In The Face Of High Turnover

You don’t need us to wax lyrical over the benefits a high staff retention rate holds for your business. Fostering loyalty and being able to invest a similar amount of loyalty, as well as time and resources, into that key talent, represents one of the cornerstones of any successful, profitable and healthy enterprise. 

What’s more, it is by far the most economical approach. As it stands, the true cost of hiring a new employee in the UK stands at around £50,000 – a figure that spans their entire first year of working within your company. Replacing a single good employee is, for this reason alone, undesirable; routinely filling the gaps left by a workforce with a rapid turnover rate is potentially devastating for a company of any size. 

Nevertheless, ‘staff churn’ is on the rise. As the full workforce can reopen in a post-pandemic world, employees are once again looking to aim higher and to move on in search of a business that will invest in them. So, how can you go against the grain and retain your best staff members? Read more below. 

Invest In Staff Engagement

If there’s one thing made clear by the rapid rise in employee turnover rates, it’s that businesses can no longer afford to gloss over or, worse still, neglect their employee engagement strategies. Working to actively increase employee engagement is a fundamental part of core business. Still, working to boost employee engagement comprises far more than a single task or incentive. For that reason alone, utilising an employee engagement programme that collates together all of the most fundamental aspects of a strong staff engagement strategy – from ad hoc rewards and sales-based incentives to long-term learning and development targets and social recognition – is one of the most valuable decisions you can make in this rapidly evolving business climate. 

Gain Insight From Exits

Even in an ideal world, there will be times when employees move on from your business. It may not be frequent – and, with the right investment into engagement and retention, it won’t be – but the fact remains that, in all your years of business, you will say farewell to your fair share. Whether they found a better offer elsewhere, or something in your business’s philosophy just didn’t gel with theirs, there is a lot to learn from someone who is no longer going to be a part of your workforce. 

Work on creating exit surveys, which will generate frank and deeply insightful data for you to learn from in the future. It is never a good thing to lose a strong employee, but that’s not to say you cannot find some long-term benefit from it. 

Pay More

This may sound obvious – and a little less attractive than some of the other suggestions on this list – but regularly raising employees’ salaries is part of being a competitive employer. Given the costs of hiring a replacement, raising the salary of a strong employee is the far more attractive option – and it will likely keep them from finding any reason to start browsing the job market.

While, for the past year, prospective employees have been working hard to stand out from an unprecedented crowd of hopeful hires, the tables are turning, and it is now the job of the business to stand out from a burgeoning job market. That includes businesses that have already garnered a strong workforce, in addition to those who are still trying to build one.