Inspire Success

In recent newsletters we have discussed the importance of finding and employing the right employees, their induction and their probationary period. Hiring employees is just a start to creating a strong work force. Next, you have to keep them. High employee turnover costs you in time and productivity. Here we discuss ways to reward and retain those employees, the importance of showing employees why they should stay working for you and also how it can improve your reputation with future employees. Salary increases and bonuses are ways to reward and retain employees but in this article we will focus on non monetary ways for retaining that key talent in your business......

Why put so much effort into keeping them?

Retaining employees is a good measure of how healthy your business is. If you are losing key employees chances are that other employees are looking also.

There are a lot of benefits to retaining your employees and these include:-

• Cost savings – the cost of staff turnover is very expensive as well as time consuming
• Improved productivity – continued work efficiency and customer service. It also ensures a reliable knowledge base about your business processes, policies and procedures
• Positive staff morale
• Happy clients – clients have continued relationship with same staff members
• Allows employees to build on their knowledge base and make career development
• Positive culture for your business which is good for current employees and new recruits

Ways to reward and retain employees
It is important for your business to keep your employees motivated and engaged and in return retain them. As the saying goes; “A happy worker is a productive worker”.

Salary is not the only way to motivate staff. There are a number of non monetary ways to  help your staff feel important and rewarded and keep them motivated and happy. These include:-

• Incentivise your employees – there are low and no-cost incentives you can use to make your staff feel valued e.g. an afternoon off, cinema tickets, breakfast morning etc
• Meet your employees regularly to talk about their work, what motivates them, their professional development and discussing the long term vision for them with your business
• Good quality supervision of employees – supervisors have an important role in the retention of employees. Its very important the supervisor does not make the employee feel undervalued. Examples of good supervision include providing feedback about performance, having regular meetings and being clear about work expectations.
• Allow employees to offer ideas, have open communication and give feedback – let employees feel comfortable doing this and encourage their involvement
• Having a fair and equitable company – treating employees equally is very important in retaining them
• Giving employees the opportunities to learn and grow in their knowledge, skills and career -   coaching employees by Managers, attending seminars, training, conferences etc
• Promoting from within whenever possible, having clear paths of advancement for employees

To retain staff you must make them feel rewarded, recognised and appreciated. It is good to be creative in (non monetary) ways of keeping employees happy and choose whatever works best for your business, even the simple act of saying “thank you” can go a long way…….

Over the last few years I have had MANY discussions with employers and their staff about challenges working with the “young people of today”. (Now for those of you reading who are those young people – don’t worry I will not be ranting on as you expect!)

In fact there were so many discussions and so much passion in the discussion that it became obvious that I had to learn more about the so called Generation Y, or Millenials or Echo Boomers. How interesting that journey has been and continues to be!

Lets set the scene, I have a business owner, a department head, a team leader, all making negative comments about their GenY employees. The sort of things I heard included they were impatient, lazy, want to be nurtured (constant feedback, immediate recognition) at work, demand workplace flexibility. They are unresponsive to motivational tactics, are motivated not only by money, but also fun and their social life, they are easily bored, have no job or brand loyalty, they focus on their life rather than work (work to live).

They are slack in their appearance, from a workforce perspective: they are difficult to attract, harder to manage and are proving near impossible to retain. They are image conscious, wont automatically give respect, are materialist and demand the rationale behind any request of them (Gen WHY).

So have you ever thought about why they are this way? What about this as an idea:

They have no job or company loyalty because they watched their parents work for years for an employer, working long hours, giving up family time, only to be made redundant in the down turn in the 1990’s.

They are not only motivated by money, but also fun and their social life, because they have been told by their parents (people like you and me) to get out and have a good time – don’t spend all your time at work, get some balance!

They are impatient because their parents always worked hard to give them things that we didn’t get. We didn’t want them to wait to save, they learned about credit cards. We have microwave ovens (that seem to take forever!) and digital cameras that don’t have film that needs to be taken completely or need to go to be developed.

They want constant recognition at work because they are used to it at home. How good am I? – ‘you are fabulous darling!’

There is so much discussed about the negatives, but not a lot of us taking responsibility for the wonders we have created.

But what about the other side? There are some positive aspects of this generation that need to be highlighted, to decrease these generational barriers and create a more cohesive workforce with more satisfied employers and employees. And there are plenty of positives about these individuals.