Our benchmark data for UK organisations show a consistent backlog of people wanting to leave, with many sitting tight until new opportunities come along. As more jobs appear in a stronger economy, employees’ waiting game will be over and it could be goodbye to some of your best talent.
If you aren’t investing in your people’s experience and developing their employee value proposition (EVP) in the quieter times, you could be left behind in a future economic rebound. Above all, you should avoid mistaking people sitting tight for employee satisfaction.
Read more: Five ways to recharge your retention strategy
We are seeing under-pressure employers going beyond cuts to their HR and DEI teams to reduce investment in their employees. Companies taking their people for granted in this way could be missing the opportunity to improve their employee experience to help them retain people for the better times. Despite the years of upheaval and the ever-present budget constraints, companies will need to be on the right side of a wave of departures when the good times finally return.
Amid relentless cost pressures, you can’t be expected to invest in everyone. But you will need to prioritise your key talent. This means finding ways to give your best people better opportunities or more fulfilling career pathways, and ensuring that you personalise their experience and rewards.
Ways to reconnect
If this seems like an unenviable task, we have identified five practical (and sometimes surprising) ways to re-energise or reconnect with your best people, often reusing existing data and averting a collapse of the HR budget.
1. Use analytics
First, use analytics from employee sentiment surveys to understand where employees are least engaged, and which parts of the organisation you may expect to see retention or attrition issues.
2. Identify key positions
Organisations who may need to be cautious with their spending and efforts should prioritise based on key positions (mapping which job roles make the most difference to performance), ensuring that engagement and plans for encouraging your top talent to remain with the organisation are healthy, and prioritise spend against their key targets.
3. Consider employee feedback
If budgets are frozen, or in decline, or surveys suggest a reluctance to return to the office, think about what your employees are saying in their feedback. What options could the organisation deliver at least cost? For example, are there opportunities for nine-day fortnights?
Read more: Frontline worker dissatisfaction costs UK £14bn per year
Given recent polls show that Thursday is becoming popular as a back-in-the-office day, could senior management allow more (or different) WFH days?
4. Unify through mission
If your people are sending mixed or confused messages over your company’s mission, its values or business objectives, a company-wide reset day could be a practical opportunity to clarify your EVP, what needs to be done in the year ahead and what is expected of each team member to ensure your re-engage them individually.
Read more: Employee retention: How to earn employee trust and retain top talent
A smart way to stay ahead of attrition is to keep an eye on market data such as employer ratings sites and benchmarking to ensure you can offer a compelling package.
5. Foster re-engagment
Where disengagement is clear, HR teams should consider hands-on tactics such as stay interviews. It’s surprising how often disaffected or high-performing people can be re-engaged or remotivated by a one-to-one discussion that restates the company’s commitment to their employee and recalibrates the employee’s career path and clarifies what senior management expects of them.
By Jessica Brannigan, regional director, EMEA people science, Culture Amp
