How to Prevent Employee Turnover and Retain Your Workforce

According to Forbes, “employee turnover is something that every business experiences.” Negative employee experiences are inevitable, but also preventable. The bottom line is that any amount of employee turnover hurts a company. Indeed states that “when an employee quits, companies can sometimes spend twice as much as that employee’s salary in recruiting, hiring and training a replacement.” This means that companies can save huge amounts by retaining rather than reacquiring people for their job positions. Turnover not only impacts whole company dynamics like revenue, but also internal aspects such as team or company culture. When an employee leaves an organization, it affects the current employees working there. Current employees tend to feel a low sense of morale because of the impact left behind by the departing employee. This blog will discuss tips and tricks for your organization to retain your employees and prevent turnover as much as possible.

Top Reasons Employees Leave their Workplace

There are two types of turnover – voluntary and involuntary. Voluntary turnover is when an employee voluntarily chooses to leave an organization and join another. On the other hand, involuntary turnover is when an employer chooses to terminate an employee from the organization. For now, let’s focus on voluntary turnover. Employees leave an organization for a multitude of reasons – burnout, lack of professional growth, negative feelings towards management, health issues, family events, lack of work-life balance…etc. When an employee feels like there is no more room for development in their role or they are no longer needed at their current organization, they tend to look for better opportunities. If the organization is unable to meet the employee’s needs and expectations, another employer might just do so. Employees need to feel like their professional growth isn’t stagnant. When the time for performance reviews comes around, they need to be able to look back and reflect on their progress to ensure they’ve contributed something to the organization they work in.

Hire the Right People

According to Forbes, “keeping employees starts with hiring the right employees.” An organization is likely to hire employees whose skills are the highest match for current open positions. Not only that, hiring managers and recruiters must ensure that the candidate fits into the company culture. Will they be able to get along with the existing employees? Will they be willing to adapt to the organization’s working environment? Questions like these could help the hiring manager decide if a candidate is a right fit for a specific team and for the overall organization.

Offer and Encourage Flexible Working Hours

Now that people are coming back to in-person workspaces, it’s not always easy for some of them to adapt to a different work environment straight away. According to Forbes, “flexible work schedules let employees adjust their work time and location.” In turn, this will allow employees to have a sense of work-life balance. Start with a hybrid work schedule, like asking employees to come into the office twice a week, for starters. This way, it can allow employees to adjust their working hours when they work from home on other days. They can also handle other responsibilities, such as attending to family members and going to appointments. If employees are encouraged to balance their time outside of the workspace, they will come into the workspace with increased motivation and satisfaction.

Encourage Professional Development

There is always room for learning at work. The easiest way to learn at work is from the people around you – in other words, talking to other colleagues from other departments. When employees enter and progress through the working world, it’s important for them to have the support and resources to find and pursue professional development opportunities. Professional development means finding opportunities for growth when it comes to skills and knowledge in the working world. These opportunities can refer to continuous education or training programs within or outside the organization an employee works in, such as networking events, apprenticeships or internships, performance reviews and feedback, and online certification courses. Professional development is all about adding to your skillset with similar or different opportunities and that comes with a positive mindset. Having a positive mindset boosts self-confidence and improves how people view you as a teammate and colleague.

Have Regular One-On-One Meetings

One-on-one meetings are the best chance for a manager-employee relationship to remain solid and stable. These meetings keep employees grounded and secure at work. These are a type of meeting held between a manager and their employee, often on a regular basis, that involves discussing growth, performance, development, and motivation. It doesn’t matter how often they occur, and they should be a recurring calendar event. The goal of these meetings is to ensure that managers and their employees are on the same page professionally. These meetings are a great way for employers to engage with and retain their employees.

Recognize Employee Efforts

When employees come into the office, they want their efforts to be validated and appreciated. The time they put into their work show in their efforts and outcomes. Gestures, such as a simple “thank you” or a “good job”, go a longer way than you think they would. Appreciation is a big deal, especially with employees who are not to be taken for granted. It’s a challenge to find good eggs in the workplace. Making sure your team members feel appreciated and validated will only make your relationship with each other that much stronger. It’s not easy to find a wonderful group of employees. Find ways to make your employees feel wanted and validated in your organization so that they stick around and stick together through thick and thin.

Preventing Employee Turnover with PxidaEX

It’s not easy to keep employees satisfied. But who doesn’t love a good challenge? With our powerful tool, PxidaEX, the life of business owners will be made much easier. This awesome tool can help you gather feedback from all of your employees in terms of how to improve employee retention rate, rather than increase your turnover rate. Sign up for a free trial today!