The 5 pillars of a successful employee retention strategy

A recent study found that in 2021 68% of employees have decidedto change companies. Even though the pandemic may have admittedly played a role, this is more indicative of the inability of companies to retain their employees.

A successful employee retention strategy is not only crucial for keeping a team happy, but also for the company itself, as losing and recruiting new employees is costly and time-consuming.

In this article, we will introduce you to five directly implementable structures to sustainably improve your employee retention.

But first, we need to clarify the following:‍

What does employee retention mean?

Employee retention is an important part of a company's strategy, which, as the name suggests, helps retain employees with the company in the long term. This includes creating channels and structures that promote the personal development of employees and increase employee satisfaction.

In times low unemployment and increasing competition for talent should employers be particularly interested in retaining their employees.

According to recent studies, the following 6 offers are currently the most important for employees:

• forums to share new ideas
• Clear contacts and transparency in case of major changes
• Positive working atmosphere
• Get appreciation for work
• Work-life balance especially for young families
• Compensation based on competence and responsibility

Efforts to implement these are sometimes discouraging, but they have positive effects on employee engagement and performance in the long term.

Today, most companies do this by using HR technologies for recruitment, onboarding, and employee engagement, establishing flexible work structures, and offering modern benefits such as physical and financial wellness programs.

If a company manages to successfully implement a good employee retention strategy, this can result in the following 10 benefits:

• Increased employee loyalty
• Lower hiring costs
• Attractiveness for new talent
• Fewer employment gaps
• Better customer relationships
• Positive corporate culture
• Better brand reputation
• Increased empathy among employees
• Process optimizations
• Higher productivity

However, in order to be able to provide the above-mentioned offers for employees, no major initiatives need to be launched.

You can already achieve great success with the following 5 employee retention structures.

5 successful employee retention structures

1. Authentic recruitment processes

Unmet expectations are one of the most frequently cited reasons why new hires fail. It is therefore important to focus on “expectation management” even during the hiring process. The best You can reach new talent through a realistic picture of the job that awaits them. Here, it therefore makes sense to focus on the already positive characteristics of your own corporate culture and to present them in an appealing way, instead of advertising for the “perfect” job. Because it most likely doesn't exist anyway!

2. Take time to onboard!

Proper training is the be-all and end-all of employee retention. The goal of every training session should not only be to explain to new employees how they should do their tasks, but also that they enjoy doing and understanding them. No one likes to do work that they think is pointless. It is therefore important to make clear the importance of the tasks for the “big picture”. It's critical to take time and address individual needs and requirements rather than using the blueprint that's probably been used for 10 years.

3. Create highlights

Especially when working from home or with hybrid working models, it is difficult to maintain the corporate culture that your company is known for. Communication usually takes place exclusively in text form. Unfortunately, the good feeling of having lunch with colleagues in the office, for example, or using the corridors is often missing. One way to counteract this would be to create highlights on the intranet with remote team events, awards or recurring formats that your colleagues can look forward to.

4. Upskilling teams

Upskilling means giving employees the skills they need to take on new tasks in their current role or to prepare them for a new role.

A recent A survey of executives carried out in 2022 showed that 50% are planning to cut jobs. In the same survey, hiring and retaining talent was named the most important challenge for business growth. These figures may seem contradictory, but they show a lack of continuing education opportunities. As a result, managers struggle to find new employees with in-demand skills, while overlooking current employees who are unable to survive in markets with changing requirements.

An employee who is constantly evolving is more effective, regularly feels challenged and is more likely to stay with a company for the long term. Staff turnover is expensive. On average, leaving an employee costs the company 33% of their annual salary. Therefore, training or retraining teams has a positive effect on the economic growth of a company. The challenge for the HR department is to assess the potential of employees and to provide them with the right approaches and tools for continuous development. Every company needs an individual strategy to determine its qualification requirements.

5. Improving employee experience

Employee experience is just as important as customer experience. The way in which communication is seen and handled in a company has a decisive influence on the employee experience. Good communication within the company means that every voice is heard and ideas from all levels of the hierarchy are regarded as relevant.

The way a company typically communicates has long been based on male communication norms. Loud HBR Recognizing a range of communication styles is a necessary factor to close the gender gap in employee retention, rather than trying to squeeze all employees into a specific shape.

In 2021, interviewees from Future Forum Pulse Report from Slack more than 10,000 employees in the USA, UK, Australia, France, Germany and Japan and found that there is a huge gap between executives and non-executives. Most worrying was the finding that 66% of managers said that the post-pandemic HR policy was created with little or no input from employees. This shows the type of top-down decision-making that does not focus on employee experience. Such startling data seems counterintuitive, particularly at a time when industry is struggling to retain and motivate a workforce that is struggling with dissatisfaction and burnout is struggling.

According to Qualtrics, there are three key points for improving the employee experience that companies should focus on:

1. Motivating employees through flat hierarchies and corporate culture.
2. Technology to support transparency and efficiency
3. A good balance between convenience and efficiency in the workplace, both on-site and remote.

The topic is by no means new, but the challenge for HR in 2022 and 2023 is finding new approaches to strengthen employee engagement throughout their time with the company. Accordingly, an employee experience strategy should also include creating spaces for new ideas and experiments and, above all, for honest feedback. Understanding and implementing feedback correctly is central to a good employee experience and therefore good employee retention.‍

How can Cönster help you retain employees?

If you want to retain your employees in the long term, you should choose a holistic approach that takes into account the most important factors for the employee experience.

cofenster can help you design an authentic recruitment process, improve onboarding processes, create highlights, connect online and offline employees, use flexible communication styles and methods, and increase overall employee satisfaction. And all this through simply produced videos!