Boosting Employee Retention: How to Get Your Employees to Stay

Let’s face it - the time when job security was worth doing anything and everything for is long behind us. Now, the time has come for employees to set their demands. And it turns out they’re quite picky.

They have every right to be - they’re the ones with the skills and knowledge - and if you don’t provide satisfactory conditions for their stay, someone else will. So, while they jump from company to company, each iteration more suited to their high demands than the other, you’re left with one of the most devastating business problems - employee turnover. It drains your money, your manpower, your time and other resources.

And you don’t know how to stop it. Because it’s very rarely just about the money.

If changing a couple of digits on their paychecks isn’t going to be enough, what can you do to make your employees want to stay and work for you?

Don’t Overburden Them

Stressful working environment, tight timelines and ridiculous expectations are one of the main suspects for what’s losing you points with employees. Especially if the workload is uneven among team members so it looks like you’re punishing some of them (usually the most hard-working ones) or if you’re making them work overtime every other day. Putting more and more tasks on an employee’s plate without the slightest hint of a salary bump is eventually going to push them to leave.

In order to avoid this, plan plan plan! Organize projects and tasks so that they’re not overburdening or stressful, set deadlines that are achievable, and allow employees to take breaks. Using programs to monitor employee computer activities can help you do this more precisely because you’ll be able to know everyone’s capabilities and limits.

Help Them Develop

Professional development is extremely important to today’s knowledge workers. Very few people want to be stuck doing the same repetitive run-of-the-mill job for the rest of their lives; most people want to learn new skills, gain expertise and climb up the ladder. This is good for the business too.

So play to employees’ strengths. Get them to hone their skills and develop into experts within the field that they’re interested in. This will not only make them more engaged and thus more likely to stay, but it’ll also make them more competent and turn them into better assets to your company.

Offer Flexibility

One thing that’s significantly gained in popularity lately is flexibility. It could be remote work or flexible working hours, but if you don’t allow it at least to some degree you risk your employees being dissatisfied.

There are almost no excuses for not being flexible. Even the question of how to monitor computer activity remotely has been resolved with the implementation of remote computer surveillance software. So you can be sure that your employees are performing well even if they occasionally work from home.

In any case, the least you can do is make working hours a little bit flexible. It’s not going to ruin your business and it’ll make your employees happier and less likely to look for this elsewhere.

Reward Achievements and Improvement

Again, nobody wants to be stuck in the rut. You need to show your employees that you value their every achievement and even steady improvement. Don’t wait for an employee to reinvent the industry in order to give them a raise.

You can monitor computer usage and look at productivity reports that you get. Is there an improvement in efficiency? Does an employee work hard? Reward this engagement at least with a positive feedback. Besides using employee monitoring services, also look at the quality of the work done and whether an employee made an impact on your business goals. If they did, chances are they’re going to expect a little bit more than just a pat on the back.

Be Transparent

It goes without saying that nobody likes being lied to. But what employees also don’t appreciate is being kept out of the loop.

For example, if you decide to monitor employee computer activities, you need to let them know about this, explain everything they need to know, answer all their questions and be completely honest and straightforward about everything. Their reaction to this will be much more positive than to finding out they’ve been spied on months later.

Transparency also refers to telling them about your business goals and sharing your successes and failures. This will make them feel like they belong, which is definitely a feeling worth staying for.

Give Them Purpose

Having a purpose and a goal is extremely important for wanting to stay at a company. A huge part of giving this purpose to your employees is providing them with clear guidelines and expectations. According to a survey, about 23% of employees who quit their jobs stated that having clear guidelines would have made a difference in making that decision.

So make sure your employees always know what’s expected of them. You can even use the software to keep track of employees’ progress in reaching the goals you’ve set.

Recognize Their Contribution

Finally, make every employee feel valued for the role they play within your organization. Their voice should always be heard and their comments should be taken seriously.

Show them that you value their contribution by including them in the decision-making process as well as by providing regular feedback on their performance. Again, you can make use of software to track employee computer usage in order to make these evaluations personal and accurate.

Be constructive in your criticism and generous with praise, and your employees are going to be more motivated and happy to stay.

Conclusion

Employee retention is one of the biggest goals of modern businesses. Having top performers want to stay and work for you is going to give you an edge that no amount of other assets can. So treat your employees accordingly.

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