Employee turnover can create all sorts of problems for your business, so it’s incredibly important to take the proper steps in order to minimize it within your organization. Today, we’ll be discussing various strategies that you can use to help reduce your turnover rate, and hopefully become a stronger and more profitable business as a result.
Important note: Before we dig into these strategies, make sure you've got your company culture ship-shape!
Otherwise, implementing any of these strategies will be like putting a bandage on a broken leg - pointless and temporary. Without further ado, here are 8 strategies that might help reduce the employee turnover rate within your company!
This may seem like an obvious starting point, but it's pretty much the most important strategy that you can implement to reduce employee turnover.
People are willing to work for less money if they know that their jobs make them happy. Happy people stay longer in jobs, and reduce the overall cost of employee turnover.
Of course, there's a lot more involved in providing competitive compensation to a worker than just an hourly wage. This includes benefits packages (e.g. health care, paid leave), equity packages (e.g. stock options, restricted stock units), and development opportunities that allow for flexible work arrangements or remote working.
Good managers that properly recognize and reward their employees can play a huge role in keeping employees engaged while at work! Employee engagement is an easy, but incredibly important strategy to implement: This can be as simple as thanking them for their hard work, providing lunch or snacks, sending personalized notes to show that they're valued, encouraging their professional development with opportunities for advancement or training, etc. This will not only raise employee satisfaction, but it should also help with employee morale and the overall company culture.
Now more than ever, workers crave flexibility and a good work/life balance. Offering a good amount of flexibility for employees can greatly improve employee happiness, and should be prioritized. This includes working hours (e.g. allowing flexibility in scheduling), where employees can do their work (e.g. at home/office/coffee shop/remote location), and expectations around work time (e.g. not requiring employees to respond to emails or phone calls outside normal business hours).
Many workers possess a growth mindset, and companies that offer opportunities to grow within them have been proven to be more profitable. A businesses’ high employee turnover rate is oftentimes directly correlated with lacking opportunities for growth, due to the fact that nobody wants to work a dead-end job. The average worker desires to constantly progress and “move up the ladder” so to speak, so offering some possibilities for growth within an organization can really go a long way.
This one sounds so simple it's a bit silly to include, but a lot of companies do not practice it!
One of the biggest factors that can contribute to a company's high turnover rate is simply managers not treating their employees with respect. Employees want to feel valued and respected at a company. This includes treating them the way that you would want to be treated, not micromanaging or interfering in their day-to-day work, and listening to what they have to say.
We've already mentioned that happiness is a huge factor in avoiding high turnover, but it bears repeating!
Employees who are happy will remain at your company longer than those who aren't. Obviously you want to reduce staff turnover as much as possible, so this should be one of your main priorities. A happy worker also equals an overall better company culture.
Studies have shown that hiring a new employee costs an average of over $7,000, so hiring employees that are less likely to leave is incredibly important in order to avoid a high turnover cost. If you hire workers who are less likely to leave, then logically your employee turnover rates will drop.
This one can be difficult to reduce, but there are some tricks you can use to reduce the amount of time and money spent on hiring (e.g. using software like pre-hire assessments to reduce the time spent on sifting through applications).
So this one sounds a bit harsh, but there's also some truth to it. It might seem counter-intuitive since you want to increase employee retention, but if your business is full of people who are not a good fit for the role, they are probably going to leave anyway. If you have employees who simply aren’t a good fit for your company, then it probably makes the most sense to remove them on your own terms. Involuntary turnover often offers more benefits to a company over voluntary turnover, so this final strategy is worth considering.
By following these strategies, you should be able to reduce the employee turnover rate within your company, and hopefully also result in a healthier and more profitable business overall! For those looking to find more information on employee turnover rate, check out the comprehensive guide to employee turnover -- and don’t forget to check out Matter, a service that can help grow and improve your business’s work culture and possibly even lower your employee turnover rate in the long-term, or at least calculate employee turnover costs. Try it for free today!
