Retention needs to be at the beating heart of everything you do. Reacting only when turnover starts to spike is leaving things too late. Far better to keep ahead of the game and find some new and original ways to refresh your strategy.
It’s all too easy to keep doing the same things again and again. So stepping off the hamster wheel for a moment and doing something different is vitally important. But just how do you do go about ringing the changes and applying fresh ideas?
As spring starts to turn into summer, here are five suggestions to help you reactivate and recharge your retention strategies.
Ask what your problem is
All journeys start with a first step, but before setting off it’s vital to know where you are starting from. So first check how your employees are feeling right now – and maybe even refresh the way you do this and the questions you ask.
Use internal communications and feedback tools to understand and define the issues. Then you can use that feedback to better refine and even re-set your engagement measures and targets.
This knowledge will give you the strength to convince key stakeholders to buy into the changes you feel are vital to implement. After all, this might be part of a long term process of improvement.
Once started, you need to assess the impact the changes are making and refine them if necessary. The ability to demonstrate positive change is essential if you are to keep the momentum and engagement from your C-suite into the activities you’ve implemented.
React quickly
Once you’ve identified an issue which needs to be addressed – don’t delay. You really do have a problem if it takes you months to fix it.
To really engage people you need to show that you not only appreciate that there is a need to make a change, but to then show you truly understand by moving swiftly to implement the necessary changes.
This is where AI tools such as sentiment analysis can help, by allowing you to see trends and react swiftly.
Build a sense of ‘togetherness’
It’s not just about HR and line managers engaging with employees, it’s also critical to enable employees to engage with each other.
People enjoy being part of a ‘community’ in the workplace, a sense of togetherness and interconnectivity.
This is even more vital as we start to work more remotely. So use technology – especially those social network technologies which employees are already familiar with – to allow employees to build communities, share links, ideas and information.
Empower your employees
More and more companies are recognising that when it comes to career development, giving the individual the tools to explore and plan their own future is not only highly engaging, but significantly boosts retention levels.
The tools are out there right now (including our own platform, People First) which can enable you to give far greater autonomy to employees and let them identify the skills and knowledge gaps they need to work on to develop their future careers within your business.
This not only fires up greater engagement, but building personal learning records helps you to monitor your own internal skills base, improving retention, strengthening your succession planning, and reducing recruitment costs.
Celebrate your successes
From a simple ‘thank you’ to an appropriate team reward for a job well done, nothing engages people more than being recognised for the contributions they make to the success of the business.
It’s important therefore to use open internal stages to do this, as this in turn helps create cross functional celebrations. These contribute to better retention by both sharing what teams are working on and demonstrating just how this drives success for everyone right across the business.
These are by no means the only ways to give your retention strategies a spring clean – there are, no doubt, many other ways you can reach out and engage and re-engage your employees.
But essential to all of them is technology – accessible, connective, easy to use and analyse. So as you put a spring into the step forward you are making with your plans to retain, it’s also worth doing the same for your technology.
The good news is that solutions are out there which do genuinely make it easier than ever to build the connectivity you need – and transform these five suggestions into workable solutions for your business and the vitally important people whose engagement makes that business really thrive.
Rebecca Carter is product owner (talent and engagement) at MHR
To find out more about how MHR can help you to ramp up your retention strategies contact us now.
