Retaining Top Talent: Tips to Keep Your Employees Happy

Written by:
David Lewis
CEO

The talent pool is scarce these days, and finding employees with desirable skillsets is a difficult and competitive process. But what might be more difficult is retaining these talented workers once you recruit them. Ensuring your employees stay at your company can have many benefits, including saving you time and money.

So, how you can make sure you’re keeping the talent you hire and not just handing your trained talent to other organizations?

This article will discuss some best practices to help you retain top talent at your company and keep them happy and productive.

The Importance of Retaining Talented Employees

Ensuring your top employees stay put can have many benefits for your business. Recruiting takes time and costs money, so continuously replacing staff can become wasteful. You also lose out on institutional knowledge that can develop when employees are at a company long enough to learn the ins and outs and then pass on that information to their coworkers. High turnover may mean important information or processes can be lost over time.

You can also improve employee morale if your business isn’t a revolving door of people leaving and new faces arriving. Stability will make the rest of your employees feel more secure and comfortable working for your organization.

How to Retain Talent

Job seekers are not always what they appear to be. In most cases they are curiosity seekers open to exploring their options, but not really committed to accepting a new job. Much of their effort is focused on benchmarking their compensation, possibly leveraging what they learn to get more from their current employer.  

What can you offer to entice a strong employee to stay at your company? Look at the interpersonal aspects of the workplace and focus on creating a positive and balanced culture for the employee and their personal life.  

Flexible Working Options

One of the biggest risks companies will face in 2024 involves some employees they have hired since the start of COVID-19 who work 100% remotely and are located too far from a company office to consider working onsite. The more extroverted employees will start to hunger for the social aspects of going to an office and I expect to hear of resignations by otherwise happy employees with the exit interview data showing they left for a job where they could be around others a few times a week/month in an office. 

On the other side, the issue of remote work vs. in-office work continues to swirl. When higher profile brands and firms announce the need for their teams to come back to the office it makes the news. Why? Because it is clear that these decisions are unpopular with many of their employees who have grown to enjoy and even depend on the flexibility of working from home. This will likely lead to turnover and cultural erosion as well. The key is to talk to your employees, find out what works best for them and their lifestyle/families, and try to accommodate their needs to the best of your ability.  

If you want to improve in-office attendance as the summer wraps up, consider running a regular series of special in-office events designed to drive a routine of in-office traffic. Food trucks, happy hours, theme days, etc., strung together ideally over different weeks and different weekdays may draw more people in and encourage them to start coming in more on non-theme days, as they start to see the benefit of their in-office presence. 

With schools about to reopen, employers should be prepared for disruption when it comes to the employees with school-aged kids. This includes possibly dealing with those struggling to find childcare due to ongoing shortages of service providers. There is always an adjustment from summer vacation and camp routines to the back-to-school routines, so be patient and understanding. It’s best to get ahead of this and talk to your employees now to try and accommodate them instead of seeing the disruption occur before your eyes. 

The Effects of Employee Benefits

In 2023, the number of international tourists and vacationers coming from the U.S. has reportedly skyrocketed. This more extensive and complete use of PTO is, of course, something to be encouraged to prevent burnout in your staff, but it should also be watched. Companies should be getting ahead of this now by ensuring time off is organized and your office isn’t empty for weeks at a time. Managers should make it clear to their teams that vacation is to be requested, followed (possibly) by being approved, and that vacation is approved if/when the employer sees the absence of employees as not impacting their ability to effectively run their business.  

If your firm has come to realize how valuable voluntary (100% employee paid) benefits can be as a tool to attract and retain, then now is the time to consider rolling these out – NOT during open enrollment for Medical, but instead sometime before or after. It is all too common for employers to cut voluntary benefits or put less time and energy into their rollout because of the time needed to explain medical insurance options. These benefits (i.e., supplemental life, forms of dental, supplemental medical, prepaid legal, pet insurance, etc.) are often more valued than other core benefits, and as such need to be given their own dedicated spotlight.  

Also consider expanding your professional development and training opportunities. Employees that are able to learn new skills or brush up on their current ones will feel more confident and valued in the workplace. If they have a clear path to success laid out before them, they will be more likely to stay at your company rather than take a chance somewhere else that isn’t so clear.  

Finally, your employee compensation plan should be fair and competitive, as well as supportive of your strategy, vision, and values. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that wages and salaries rose 5% from March 2022 to March 2023, so be sure to research what others in your industry are offering. Your compensation plan must also comply with equal pay and pay transparency laws to avoid any concerns related to pay equity or discrimination.  

Attracting and Retaining Talented Employees with Help from Experts 

Now that you understand how best to ensure your strong workers remain at your company, you can start building even stronger teams. The expertise of a trusted partner can help with all your recruitment, professional development and training challenges. OperationsInc has over 20 years of experience in all aspects of HR, recruiting and training, and has helped over 2,000 firms build better teams full of top talent.  

In this competitive job market with fewer qualified candidates to choose from, you may not find someone who checks all the boxes for your position. Our “Interviewing for Core Skills in a Competitive Job Market” training can show you how to find the best fit for your company’s culture and needs and find talent with a diverse skillset to bring to your organization. 

Learn more about our recruitment services here, or read some of our related articles: 

• 5 Mistakes to Avoid in Recruitment Services 
• How Employees Working in Multiple States Can Impact HR Strategy 
• How to Approach Remote Workforce Management 

 Reach out today and chat with our experts to start your new recruitment strategy.